Note: I started this entry a couple weeks ago...hence the date weirdness...
There's other things going on in my life other than reminiscing about India (although, not much - or that's how it feels anyway), like Thanksgiving and Christmas prep and talk of 12/12/12 (nothing happened, in terms of something happened, although it was a perfectly fine day), talk of the end of the world on Dec 21 (nothing more than an fearful interpretation of the prophecy which says it's basically a DAY of ritual and recognizing the change that is and has been happening over 50 years; we at the supposed midpoint).
But India and my memories are still a big part of what I spend my time doing, so let's talk about it. I was talking about the food, specifically the food at the children's home. It was interesting - very good, taste-wise, but with its own set of complications. First of all, there was the kitchen.
The kitchen was one of the moments I had in India - one of those, "Well, I am here, doing this, and who knew that was going to happen?" moments. They had invited us to help with cooking once at least while we were there - we also served the kids as well, their lunch or snacks. I went over on the first day because I was tired and at a bit of a loss for what to do with myself. Sit down, they said, and join us - they didn't speak English, but gestures work fine in these situations.
There were some others in my group already there. The work was peeling garlic. Lots of garlic, garlic for days of cooking for 150 kids. The kitchen "prep area" was a large outdoor covered concrete slab, and these odd curved knives that were basically scythe-like blades affixed to 2x4's that one sat on, and cut TOWARDS oneself (safety *not* first in India). You had to take your shoes off, but your feet were in sandals just prior and dirty anyway, and the women who work there go barefoot everywhere as well so it's not super clean, this concrete. I sat down to join them. There were flies everywhere - on us, the garlic, the pans, the floor. They showed me the garlic-peeling technique, which wasn't hard: smash full heads into cloves, then smash the clove so the skin crackles apart, then skin it and snap the end off with your thumbnail.
So that's what I did. I was a bit horrified at the food safety standards, and did not know at the time that the adult meals were prepared in the staff kitchen (with a counter, sink, water, burners instead of an open fire, etc), so I was also having to prepare to eat this. I don't mean to come off as a snob. I *do* work for an organic grocers, so I am already biased, I admit. Even so, I grew up middle class in America, and my standards have only gone UP.
But here I was, and it was what it was. This, I thought, is how MOST of the world cooks. There's more garlic being peeled on dusty, hot concrete floors with flies all around than there is garlic being peeled on shiny clean sterilized surfaces. That's just how the world is, and it's important to know it. To be there - to, as I think I have said, witness it.
So, I gave up, gave in, accepted. Okay. I peeled the garlic and as I did, I accepted that I would eat it. The kids, first day, got special coconut sweets, little mini bars, and one of them saved his last bite for me - me, the very opposite-of-starving rich white American. It was heart-breakingly sweet, and also hygienically questionable. These kids recently had worms, parasites, etc. But hey, here was a human loving me in the only way he can - there's no language between us, just gestures, and this is a big gesture. So, if you're human, you take and eat the candy. You smile and do it and you are honored as you do it, and so I did it, and I was in fact honored, and it remains a precious, wonderful memory. But I also thought, I hope that was ok to do!
There was also a rule at the orphanage, drummed into our heads prior to even leaving, on preparatory conference calls and google hangouts, that you must eat all the food you take. We discovered on our first day that they - the house mothers and cooks - wanted to STUFF you. It's cultural - in India, you must take firsts (i.e. there is no food you can refuse, really, unless it's non-veg and you are veg, in which case it's fine), and you really should take seconds, and it's only around thirds that you start to get in the realm of maybe not offending hosts but still you might.
Now, remember, it's also very hot, humid and airless. We were doing physical work before and after lunch. What you want is a light salad, perhaps some chilled soup, maybe an egg salad sandwich. Nothing heavy. Nothing like the absolutely delicious but heavy, spicy and rich dish after dish, curries and stews and rice and rice and more rice. Rice like you can't imagine. I never ate so much rice. White rice, too; I prefer brown but that was nowhere to be seen.
Part of the problem was, since you had to at least try everything, you got dishes that were VERY spicy, and yet had to be eaten. There was no way out of it, not if you wanted to be kind and polite. So you take steamed rice to cut the spice - you mix a cup of rice with a spoonful of fire-spicy shredded beets and carrots, and you can eat it, but then there's another cup with the rice dish, and more with the curry (or it's too liquid to be eaten) and you see the problem. It adds up. You can sometimes do bread instead of rice, but more heavy carbs hardly helped.
The house mothers were sneaky too - you would look the other way and they would come over and spoon another serving of whatever on your banana-leaf plate. And then you had to eat it. The food was very good, so it was wonderful in many ways but the sheer quantity could get me down. Not to mention, you ate with your hands. Hand, actually - the right one eats, the left one does everything else. It was a skill - you can't pinch and pick up, not curries and rice; it was more of a scooping motion, with the thumb acting as a little shovel, moving the food into the mouth. It was also wildly freeing. We all loved it after a while - and utensils, when they came back, dulled one's meal pleasure a bit.
It was like that in India often. It was difficult, but it was great. It was great BECAUSE it was difficult. The difficulty made the time precious. The success - the triumph, of being able to be when you think you can't go on - made it all poignant. I find myself wished I'd paid more attention to when I paced back and forth for almost two hours at the rat-ridden station in the middle of the night (3:15am train arrived after 4:30, we'd arrived very early too), or when I was taking Indian bucket showers and shaving sitting down on the floor, exhausted but elated. I paid close attention, I did - I focused my efforts on it, but it was so packed with moments, with stimulating things - smells, tastes, sounds too. The horns in India - they drove me crazy and I loved them.
I recently read a story of a couple who promoted Cambodia as a travel destination to a young, engaged couple, and the older woman says, "Cambodia is amazing, you must go. I adored it." Her husband replies, "But you *hated* Cambodia." "When I was there, I hated it," she shoots back, unfazed, "but the moment we left, I loved it." I didn't experience that, of course not. A lot of it I loved when I was there - but after I left, I loved the times I hadn't loved before.
As much as I would like to, it's hard to even list all of the major events, partly because many of the moments didn't stem from an event ("Then we went to Meenakshi Temple. and such and such happened." It wasn't like that), and party because there were so many. It was only two weeks, but there was like six months of life jammed in there. Life was jammed in the jam in India.
There's only more to say, but not an unlimited time in which to say it...
There's other things going on in my life other than reminiscing about India (although, not much - or that's how it feels anyway), like Thanksgiving and Christmas prep and talk of 12/12/12 (nothing happened, in terms of something happened, although it was a perfectly fine day), talk of the end of the world on Dec 21 (nothing more than an fearful interpretation of the prophecy which says it's basically a DAY of ritual and recognizing the change that is and has been happening over 50 years; we at the supposed midpoint).
But India and my memories are still a big part of what I spend my time doing, so let's talk about it. I was talking about the food, specifically the food at the children's home. It was interesting - very good, taste-wise, but with its own set of complications. First of all, there was the kitchen.
The kitchen was one of the moments I had in India - one of those, "Well, I am here, doing this, and who knew that was going to happen?" moments. They had invited us to help with cooking once at least while we were there - we also served the kids as well, their lunch or snacks. I went over on the first day because I was tired and at a bit of a loss for what to do with myself. Sit down, they said, and join us - they didn't speak English, but gestures work fine in these situations.
There were some others in my group already there. The work was peeling garlic. Lots of garlic, garlic for days of cooking for 150 kids. The kitchen "prep area" was a large outdoor covered concrete slab, and these odd curved knives that were basically scythe-like blades affixed to 2x4's that one sat on, and cut TOWARDS oneself (safety *not* first in India). You had to take your shoes off, but your feet were in sandals just prior and dirty anyway, and the women who work there go barefoot everywhere as well so it's not super clean, this concrete. I sat down to join them. There were flies everywhere - on us, the garlic, the pans, the floor. They showed me the garlic-peeling technique, which wasn't hard: smash full heads into cloves, then smash the clove so the skin crackles apart, then skin it and snap the end off with your thumbnail.
So that's what I did. I was a bit horrified at the food safety standards, and did not know at the time that the adult meals were prepared in the staff kitchen (with a counter, sink, water, burners instead of an open fire, etc), so I was also having to prepare to eat this. I don't mean to come off as a snob. I *do* work for an organic grocers, so I am already biased, I admit. Even so, I grew up middle class in America, and my standards have only gone UP.
But here I was, and it was what it was. This, I thought, is how MOST of the world cooks. There's more garlic being peeled on dusty, hot concrete floors with flies all around than there is garlic being peeled on shiny clean sterilized surfaces. That's just how the world is, and it's important to know it. To be there - to, as I think I have said, witness it.
So, I gave up, gave in, accepted. Okay. I peeled the garlic and as I did, I accepted that I would eat it. The kids, first day, got special coconut sweets, little mini bars, and one of them saved his last bite for me - me, the very opposite-of-starving rich white American. It was heart-breakingly sweet, and also hygienically questionable. These kids recently had worms, parasites, etc. But hey, here was a human loving me in the only way he can - there's no language between us, just gestures, and this is a big gesture. So, if you're human, you take and eat the candy. You smile and do it and you are honored as you do it, and so I did it, and I was in fact honored, and it remains a precious, wonderful memory. But I also thought, I hope that was ok to do!
There was also a rule at the orphanage, drummed into our heads prior to even leaving, on preparatory conference calls and google hangouts, that you must eat all the food you take. We discovered on our first day that they - the house mothers and cooks - wanted to STUFF you. It's cultural - in India, you must take firsts (i.e. there is no food you can refuse, really, unless it's non-veg and you are veg, in which case it's fine), and you really should take seconds, and it's only around thirds that you start to get in the realm of maybe not offending hosts but still you might.
Now, remember, it's also very hot, humid and airless. We were doing physical work before and after lunch. What you want is a light salad, perhaps some chilled soup, maybe an egg salad sandwich. Nothing heavy. Nothing like the absolutely delicious but heavy, spicy and rich dish after dish, curries and stews and rice and rice and more rice. Rice like you can't imagine. I never ate so much rice. White rice, too; I prefer brown but that was nowhere to be seen.
Part of the problem was, since you had to at least try everything, you got dishes that were VERY spicy, and yet had to be eaten. There was no way out of it, not if you wanted to be kind and polite. So you take steamed rice to cut the spice - you mix a cup of rice with a spoonful of fire-spicy shredded beets and carrots, and you can eat it, but then there's another cup with the rice dish, and more with the curry (or it's too liquid to be eaten) and you see the problem. It adds up. You can sometimes do bread instead of rice, but more heavy carbs hardly helped.
The house mothers were sneaky too - you would look the other way and they would come over and spoon another serving of whatever on your banana-leaf plate. And then you had to eat it. The food was very good, so it was wonderful in many ways but the sheer quantity could get me down. Not to mention, you ate with your hands. Hand, actually - the right one eats, the left one does everything else. It was a skill - you can't pinch and pick up, not curries and rice; it was more of a scooping motion, with the thumb acting as a little shovel, moving the food into the mouth. It was also wildly freeing. We all loved it after a while - and utensils, when they came back, dulled one's meal pleasure a bit.
It was like that in India often. It was difficult, but it was great. It was great BECAUSE it was difficult. The difficulty made the time precious. The success - the triumph, of being able to be when you think you can't go on - made it all poignant. I find myself wished I'd paid more attention to when I paced back and forth for almost two hours at the rat-ridden station in the middle of the night (3:15am train arrived after 4:30, we'd arrived very early too), or when I was taking Indian bucket showers and shaving sitting down on the floor, exhausted but elated. I paid close attention, I did - I focused my efforts on it, but it was so packed with moments, with stimulating things - smells, tastes, sounds too. The horns in India - they drove me crazy and I loved them.
I recently read a story of a couple who promoted Cambodia as a travel destination to a young, engaged couple, and the older woman says, "Cambodia is amazing, you must go. I adored it." Her husband replies, "But you *hated* Cambodia." "When I was there, I hated it," she shoots back, unfazed, "but the moment we left, I loved it." I didn't experience that, of course not. A lot of it I loved when I was there - but after I left, I loved the times I hadn't loved before.
As much as I would like to, it's hard to even list all of the major events, partly because many of the moments didn't stem from an event ("Then we went to Meenakshi Temple. and such and such happened." It wasn't like that), and party because there were so many. It was only two weeks, but there was like six months of life jammed in there. Life was jammed in the jam in India.
There's only more to say, but not an unlimited time in which to say it...
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