Coming of Age

She is about 14 years old, dressed in a dark green sari of very fine silk. On her head she wears a crown of flowers, jasmine and small orange blossoms I have yet to name. Her hair has been slicked back to within an inch of its life with coconut oil, and on it she wears glittering jewelry, Huge earrings that are connected to her headdress with chains of rhinestones, a belt of rhinestones, armlets and bangles of rhinestones, even her braid which falls far below her slim waste is heavy with hearts made of rhinestones stuck in it at small intervals. She glitters from her head to her toes. Placidly, looking down and careful not to smile, she is calmly allowing all her female relatives to apply the orange turmeric and then red sandal woad to her forehead, the back of her hands, and her feet. Occasionally another young woman steps out from behind her and wipes off her hands and feet so the next female relative can apply more spice, but her forehead mark must be an inch thick. Around her feet are bowls and platters of silver, laden with gifts. Coconuts, Mangoes, Bananas, Silk for new saris, lentils, jasmine, even a bottle of powder deodorant. She stands to accept more, touching the feet of the giver first, then pausing to hold one side of the tray while they hold the other and the cameraman snaps a photo. Today the girl has become a woman, the "flower has bloomed".
Poor girl, there is a rather tall American girl sitting in the front row who didn't get the "wear your best sari" memo taking up much of the attention. Don't blame me please, I didn't want to sit on the front row and I honestly don't know why your photographer is taking as many pictures of me as he is of you.
Suddenly someone is pushing my head down and I feel them messing with my braid. When they let me up again a woman is smiling down at me, my old string of Jasmin in her hand and a new one in my hair. Oh, uh, yes thank you that is my forehead--wow lots of red and orange powder on my forehead, okay sure why not. Oh! My neck to eh? Well, in for a penny! Slather it on my good woman. Eat that? Looks like a ball of white play-dough. Huh, tastes like playdough too. Another one? No I couldn't possibly...or you could shove it in my mouth like that. Yes thank you, lovely dough balls, I'm completely full. Oh, we are going in to eat now? Right well I'll just stand up then...you know you really don't need to hold my hand...but you're going to anyway. Smile, head bobble, keep walking.
Have you ever seen an Indian line? Well, imagine sheep filing into a feeding area and you have it. Sydney is plastered against a wall half laughing have gagging on her dough ball and a woman with bright yellow hands (she's been cow-dunging her house) grabs my arm and in we go! I think I stepped on someone back there. Sorry! No, not sari, sorry! Yes, your sari is lovely, and I am wearing a dusty salwar kamiz. Banana leaves on the table and the host is being sure we taste every dish. What the heck is that? I don't know but it tastes like condensed milk and looks like baby up-chuck. Smile, eat it! and fold the banana leaf quickly so they can't give you seconds.
Outside the proud father is telling us it is his daughter who has bloomed today. Isn't that nice? Don't you wish your dad would have thrown a party and invited the whole village when you had your first period?

Market Day

A long, dirty street with tarps suspended from ropes over our heads. Colorful tarps, as is only fitting in this technicolor country. The market is splashed with pink, blue, yellow, and green light as it filters through the torn tarps and potato sacks. The men sit behind their wares, onions, bananas, carrots, peas, fruit that definitely didn't come from this planet. Every once in a while we pass by a stall selling what we have dubbed alien fruit, which comes in watermelon sized pods but is actually more like soft sweet smelling seeds the size of large strawberries, but looking like peeled bananas. This fruit has a strong, sweet, mouthwatering taste. One day we will buy one and try it out, then we'll have a coke to kill all the weird bacteria that comes with it. Shouts from the vendors in loud, monotone, quickly repeating the name of their product in Tamil. Mangoes, orange and yellow and green and smelling divine. Thirty ruppess "kaygee"? No, more like fifteen. Twenty? Hmm...they look too ripe...twenty for a kaygee...two kaygees then. No, we don't have a rice bag, just put it in with the garlic. Women pass in their second best saris, hair slicked back with coconut oil, bangles and earrings sparkling. This is market day.
Down a side alley, with dusty brown tarps. Bags of brown woven fabric sit open mouthed with mounds of spices piled inside. Red, green, yellow, all colors. The smell is overwhelming; it smells like everything and nothing. "Madam, Madam! (rapid Tamil words)" I answer no thank you, and I don't make eye contact. They already think I'm a loose woman, no need to encourage the idea. "Which country, which country???" America (I pronounce it A mare eee kah! so they can understand me). Ah, yes, that would explain the height...or something else in Tamil. "My name is? My name is?" I fight the urge to tell them I don't know there name and instead answer the question they mean to ask, "Cathlin." "Latkin?" "Whatever." A breeze has smuggled its way into the covered alley of the bazaar, it touches my skin like a long lost friend and I welcome it just as lovingly. "Madam, Madam banana! bannana!" No, thank you Mr. Goiter man, that's a lovely skin disease you have. This is market day.
Winding out into the open street again, the blare of horns incessantly in my ears. Buses pass within an inch of my elbow and I have learned not to flinch. Rickshaw drivers call out to me, motion to their motor-rickshaws. No, thank you, I'll take the bus. The light is red, but no one stops yet. I guess it isn't really red until it has been that way for a minute. Whistles and bells and "Hello! Hi HI HIII! Which country? My name is?" Hello, Amayreeekah! Cathlin. A head bobble. "Sari, madam, sari?" No thank you. "Come in, just come into shop!" No, I don't need gold jewelry or what looks like used sandals. My feet ache, they are not feet colored anymore. They are India colored. The bus stop, a crowd of people waiting. younger girls in salwar kamiza, like me. Mature women in saris, wrapped to show a pudge of dark brown belly. Old women in saris without blouses, a glimpse of wrinkled flesh sagging down. The bus is loud, honking at everyone and no one. Standing sandwiched between two Indian women I am glad the men sit in the back of the bus, and I am grateful for my height (I think the air is cleaner up here). A long, bumpy ride on dusty roads with my hand above my hand grasping the rail like a lifeline and the blessed wind drying dirt and sweat onto my skin. Head bobble to the conductor along with my five rupees. Walking home along poo-road where so many have left their fetid mark (I don't want to look down, but I don't want to step in it either). The village, the veranda, a smiling Jeeva, and finally bare feet on the warm (but not hot) cement of my floor/bed.
This is market day.

Chavadipudur

We took the train here. Eight hours and then some. It was lovely. After all the heat of Chennai, the train had a constant breeze. It was a little crowded, but not too bad. At one stage it even started raining. The roog leaked as did our window, so we got a little wet. At about ten pm we reached Coimbatore. We meant to stay there one night and travel to the village in the morning. But we looked at over thiry hotels and none had any rooms available. So we called out host family and took a taxi straight to the village.
The six girls share a room. At night we lay out bamboo mats and sleep in sheets on the floor. When I roll over, I knee someone in the head most of the time. We have a ceiling fan, but the power goes out at least three times a night. Luckily, it isn't so hot here as it was in Chennai. I even got almost chilly the first night. In the morning, I get up and put on my flip flops which are not allowed either in the house or on the veranda, and cross the yard to the outhoust/washroom. Let's just say the outhouse is a squatter and leave it at that. Surprisingly, the left hand/right hand thing is working for me, though still a little wierd. I take a "shower" by filling a bucket from the cystern and splashing myself with it. I am careful as I fill the bucket not to use too much water as I will need to replace what I have used when the government pump is turned on in a day or so. I'll bring the water from the pump back to the house in a plastic vase thing which will probably be most comfortable on my head and dump it in the cistern where little fishes keep it clean. For drinking water we filter it with a pump filter into our bottles.
The village is surrounded by trees of all kinds and it is truly picturesque. Inside, teh houses are painted pastel blues, greens, yellows, and purples. I have been to the goddess temple where I'll be doing most of my participant observation, but it was not open when I got there. THere are a few tree shrines as well, one of which is a promising spot to chatt with the village women. As it is they come out of thier houses when I pass and we smile and put our palms together and say "vanacum" and head bobble at each other. I don't have much else to say until I find a translator.
The children drive me crazy. They won't leave us alone and you know how little I like children anyway. I'm nice, though. I keep telling them my name when they ask and no matter how often it happens I do not try to explain that no matter how many times they ask my name will still be Cathlin, and no matter how many times they repeat it they will never pronounce it right. Oh well.
Meals are eaten on banana leaves which we rinse off. Mostly rice with some spicy gravy/sauce that we mix with our hands and eat. I'm getting used to eating without utinsels. It's not so hard. The walk into "town" from where we live is long, but breezy. The "restaurants" are pretty scary looking, but I eat there twice a day and still do not feel the least bit sick.
Mattew and Jeeva (our host family) have an old man living with them (I think he is Jeeva's father). He's pretty kooky and we all enjoy his company. He speaks no English, but plays a mean hand of Uno. We try to learn Tamil words from him. Today we learned "beautiful". He told us how to say it and then gestured at me and said it a couple of times. He pointed to my braided hair and head bobbled, then to Sydney's short curly unbraided hair and shook his head. I guess unbraided hair is not beautiful.
We are back in the city today to grocery shop and internet. I can't get pictures uploaded. I'm sorry. I'll try really hard next time.

Nancy!!

I can't find your correct email address, and I need a small favor. I'm still trying to get IRB approval for my project, and I need someone in Provo to do a tiny litte errand for my. My professor signed the proposal and all but I need someone to go to the SWKT 8th floor Anthropology department and ask the secretary there for teh proposal Dr. Hartley left for Jennifer Craw. Then I need that same someone to take said proposal to the ASB second floor A wing ORCA department and drop it off there. I think I have my email somewhere on the proposal, but just to be safe someone ought to check (j_nee_bee@hotmail.com). I need whoever takes it there to make sure the ORCA office knows to contact me through email about whatever changes I need to make. Would you be that someone, dearest??? I'll bring you back a sari! (Okay, I will bring you back a sari anyway, but still). Let me know if it is too much of an inconvenience. Te quiero, che! Cuidate mucho!

Mamallapuram

We took a day trip to Mamallapuram today. Two hours on a dirty, dusty bus sitting quite close to everyone else. Mamallapuram is a shoreside temple site/village that was actually hit hard in the 2004 tsunami. In fact, I think there used to be two temples there, but the bigger one was swept out to sea. The whole complex is covered in carvings, elephants, gods, goddesses, and lots of cows. Beautiful. My favorite part, though, was the sea. The first beach we came to was not actually a resort type beach. THere were fisherman's boats along the shore and it was actually quite there except for the roar of the grey sea. It seemed so huge and peaceful, but somehow dangerous too. We hiked around the rocks they put out around the surviving temple (to save it from the sea) and came to a resort beach. I can't get used to how colorful it all is. So much more so than anything in the US. The women all stayed fully wrapped in their saris and shrieked as they got up to thier ankles in the sea. The men, and expecially boys, were not so modest or so timid; they bathed in it, letting it sweep them off and bring them back again. A few people there had horses, and I think I saw some goats. The little sea side shops were fantastic, and I had to really put on the self restraint not to buy any little hand made sculptures or seashell necklaces.

We went further inland to another temple with a huge relief behind it that boasts one of the best elephant sculptures in India. Not to shabby, I must say. The hardest part was when I went deep into the temple to see the sleeping Shiva. I thought it was hot outside, but inside was indescribable. I got a blessing though, Shiva's little silver hat thing on my head and the waving flame deal. I gave the priest a rupee for donation and stumbled out into the more bearable heat. By the way, those of you who are thinking you know what heat is, think again. Not even Argentina on it's worst day comes near what I have been living in here. It's amazing, though, how much they do all day. The city is a huge bussle of activity all day, not even a siesta during the hottest hours. It's so dirty, though. There are no trashcans, except in very expensive government buildings. Trash lines all the streets and every once in a while the smell is all but overwhelming. Going away to Mamallpuram was a blessing. Still messy but nothing like Chennai.

Let's get wrapped, eh?

There is nothing like standing in a small back room in some random indian department store having five women poking and tucking and pinning you and all the while speaking in rapid Tamil as though you could somehow understand that. In the end, you come out in some stiff, cotton wrap thing feeling like a salad wrap and looking nothing like the other women wearing saris around you. Then, the produce a comb from somewhere and start messing with the carefully braided hair you spent so long getting off your sweaty forhead. Of course, they have to put a dot on your forehead. Then they decide the dot is not enough, so they get out the red powder and spear it above a jewel that, placed right between your eye brows, already itches like mad friggin furry. To top it off, as you sit there being combed and told you look like a doll (you don't, by the way, you look like a giant in elf-land) an elevator full of thirty men is standing on the foor right in front of you. No one gets on, no one gets off, they just hold open the door and stare at you until Sydney shoos them away (oh, don't worry, they'll be back. Like I said, you're the main attraction in the zoo). What I'm I'm trying to say is, I bought a sari today and made the mistake of letting them wrap me. Tomorrow we are going back to get henna on our hands. Which will probably be an adventure as well.
Four of us went to a mosque last night. Rickshaws are not made for large american, but three usually fit tightly. The fourth had to sprawl accross out knees. When we got there, we were not allowed inside (no women's section) but since none of us whipped out a camera they decided we were respectful so they let us go into the saint shrine right next to it. A very nice woman with few teeth gave us sugar (and the ants that were crawling all over us loved it!) and a tiny cup of holy water which we drank after praying it wouldn't give us dysentary. Then the priest-ish dude whipped out a bunch of peacock feathers and fanned us around the face with them. On our way out the night watchman told us he would pray for us...if we give him some money. The rickshaw ride back was the highlight though. After a very nice woman helped us find a rickshaw I wanted to give her some rupees since she was homeless, so as I was getting into the good old money belt she pointed at me and was saying something. As we drove away I asked Natalie what she said. Apparently she thought I was pregnant. Nice. Then when our driver noticed that we were laughing when he turned sharply or stopped suddenly, he started doing it on purpose. He took us the long way home and stopped to talk to several people who poked their heads in to see us and laugh. As we passed through a slum a pile of metal dishes came flying into the street. We ran over them and our driver explained "fighting, fighting". We did make it home, it was pretty wild
I guess I should explain that we are no where near the village yet. We are in Chennai and will be until Wednesday when we take the first available train to Coimbatore. A couple of days there and we head to Chavadipudur which is our home base for the next few weeks. I haven't started any research yet, but I am working out the bathroom situation and I figure one step at a time, baby.
I ate a full meal today. My mouth still kind of hurts. It's like lighting your mouth on fire with every bite. Take that Los Hermanos.
I'll post pictures when I can, I never remember to take my camera. Syd is better at the whole photo thing. I"ll get some on here asap. Meanwhile, I'm gonna take my salwar camiza and go to a Tamil love movie. The lead actor has a mullet in the poster. Heck yeah baby, heck ya.

Sweltering, and lovely

It is deliciously hot in this country. So humid I have not felt dry since I got off the plane from Brussels. I'm trying to get used to the side to side head bob instead of my American up-down nod for yes.
I've never stuck out so much in my life. It's kind of like being the main attraction at the zoo, because I'm not only a foot taller than everyone around me but I'm also the color of milk in a chocolate world. We went clothes shopping today, I bought the material for my first sari. When I chose it, out of nowhere about ten little women came out and started wrapping me up in it and speaking to me (in Tamil, so don't ask what they said). I just kind of lifted up my elbows and let them walk underneath my arms wrapping and folding and tucking. One of the came out with "tall!!" and I head bobbed and we all started laughing like it was the funniest thing ever said in English or Tamil. I liked the girls in the fabric shop; we grinned at each other a lot for no reason, and it made the language barrier seem smaller. Then Sydney pulled out a camera and we took a picture. Talk about Gulliver's travels. I look like a freak. And I am, let's be honest.
The food is...well it's not the "Bombay House" in Provo, that's for sure. I got these little white cakes for breakfast that looked like doughy mashed up rice and were surprisingly spicy. Everything is spicy. Tomorrow we think we'll try to find a non-vegetarian restaurant so we can have omlettes...which will probably be really spicy too.
The beggers get me most. It's illegal to give them money, but they are everywhere and most are obviously disabled. I feel so horrid walking by, this stupid rich American who can't spare a single rupie for a mother with one eye and a suckling baby. They get pretty persistent, though. They grab my arms and walk along with me for a whole block. I don't feel so bad saying no to the persistent ones; it's the quieter ones that get me. Everyone else wants to sell me something, mostly a ride in an overpriced rick-shaw (which is like a mix between a taxi and a bicicle). Speaking of transportation, I have had about four near death experiences today. I can count them easily because that is the number of times I had to cross a main street today. Lot of horns and screaming of brakes. The taxi ride from the airport was awesome. We nearly missed every car that passed us and, apparently, red lights are just for decoration here since we certainly didn't stop for any.
I bought jasmine for my hair this morning, and everytime I smell something aweful (which is often) I just shake my head a little and a nice little jasmine breeze half covers it. This is gong to be a habit, I think.