Hooch

In early July, riots erupted in the Indian state of Gujarat after more than 150 people were killed by poisonous methanol. The victims had purchased illegal bootleg liquor sold by a local retailer named Harishankar Kahar whom new the 700 liters of brew contained a whopping 48% methanol (drinking 0.0015 liters of methanol can cause blindness). Incidents such as the July Ahmedabad hooch tragedy are common in India as most of the marginally and extreme poor cannot afford legally brewed alcohol.

There is a gigantic hooch trade in India, as government regulation and taxes on the legit alcohol industry are perverse. The sale of cheap, potent, sometimes-methanol-containing homebrew is a profitable trade- sometimes even for local politicians and police who are paid to forget the strict Indian hooch laws (Gujarat, for example, is actually a dry state prohibiting ALL alcohol sales.)

Our NGO, IDEX, works in many villages throughout Rajasthan. Some deal with such harsh, object poverty (think child malnutrition/starvation), that IDEX does not send its young foreign volunteers to see them. Our village is not one of these. Some of our families own motorcycles, some own livestock, one even has satellite TV! Chandyi Kheryi is by no measure posh, but it is my opinion that the residents owe thanks for many of their better living standards to the illegal liquor trade.

One of the things said to be 'keeping the Kanjar down' is the negative stigma that comes from their brewing of moonshine. I don't quite understand this as it seems to me that a number of regular Jhalrapatans and even local law enforcement are regular customers of the Kanjar brew (buying only at night, of course).

Before I go on here, let me say this: I know neoliberalism isn't perfect; if I took anything with me from my anthropology classes out to India it was a constant second guessing of the whole "we have to save these people from their current lifestyles" mision. I mean, is it possible that slum dwellers and the tradition-ridden rural poor are actually quite happy with their situations (or at least content)? Perhaps the best course of action to be taken isn't one of development and seeking to raise income education levels... but that's another post. For now, I'll just put on my economist hat and assume that developing the rural poor's markets and 'living standards' is the best thing Westerners (or at least young idealists) can strive.

So here's my question for IDEX and the residents of Chandi Kehri: Why not join the country liquor industry? The twenty or so legal Indian alcohol manufacturers currently sell 200 million cases a year, pulling in a huge chunk of change for the wet states which license and heavily tax them. Now I know it's not all that simple (remember that negative social stigma with alcohol makers? not to mention the whole caste system thing making it nearly impossible for a Kanjar to land a janitorial job, let alone a major manufacturing license for a so called poisonous industry; but again, this is the econ talking in me, not the anthro).


^I wouldn't recommend entering the restaurant business to the Kanjar. It's not that it's a notoriously tough gig, but that Joney's Cafe in Agra makes food too good to beat (he even cooks kimchi!)

Other small enterprise ideas I've floated for the Kanjar include operating tuktuks (easy market to enter, but little profit power there); running a bus (harder market to enter and find a niche route in, but more potential revenue here); and, my favorite, running public pools (think about it! I've seen loads of kids playing around big mud puddles but NO pools. Probably have to work around the whole women showing skin and most people not knowing how to swim issues but after figuring those out, it'd be a gold mine maybe).

Of course, the biggest issue with a public pool would be the extreme water shortages in Rajasthan. Though here too is a story for another post.


^The possibilities for private transportation are endless in India!


^Is striving for unbelieveable riches always the best path? Probably not (my humble midwestern roots tell me money ain't everything), but generating enough wealth to send your kids to school seems like a noble enough goal. Therefore, I encourage the marginally and extreme poor to create enterprises.

Example: Manufacturing disposable bowls for sale to street vendors. Filling a market need with a biodegradable and cheap product? Absolutely brilliant!! More on these genius little business ideas this winter...


See: "Poisonous Mix." Times of India, July 14

Daily Class Schedule

8:30am Catch bus out to village. Make nice with friendly bus conductor who is obviously proud to call us his daily customers.

8:50am Get off bus at water tower, walk ~half mile into Kanjar part of Chandi Kehri village. If its been raining, an eight foot wide stream raises in a mud bank that cuts across our walking path; makes for an early morning adventure trying to successfully cross it and get to class unmuddy.

9:00am Greet parents ("Namaste") and hug the excited kids who run out to see us. Set up tarp for the class to sit on, tattered black board, retrieve school supplies (notebooks, boards, chalk, tooth brushes, etc) from neighboring storage shed that is also used to house the village reserves of bootleg moonshine.

9:15am Walk with Rick and a few students out to well to fill a metal pot with water (bannee) for the kids to drink during the day. Later, a bore well would be installed in the village.

9:20am Brush teeth! Followed by morning exercises (head shoulders knees and toes, etc).

--First Lesson--
Rick and I teach half the class English letters, simple math, or simple English vocab. Sometimes we play games like around the world or whatever else we can come up with to entertain.

11:30am Walk the smaller children to other side of village for government subsidized meals at nearby public school. Get harassed by local school children. The purpose of our transit school is to instill skills and confidence within the Kanjar children in order to set them up for success at this neighboring public school. The rural public schools in India are run notoriously bad and I always wonder/pray the kids make it through to the school and benefit at least somewhat.


--Second Lesson--
Sohan or Sarochi Tailor teach Hindi or tell stories. The kids start getting antsy so we usually just end up playing games. The kids love to dance, hit each other/me, cheer, throw things, smile, jump around/be lifted into the sky/on trees by one of us ("mierdacool, mierdacool") and all kinds of things kids generally like to do.

~2:00pm Recess. Marbles, dodgeball, cricket, gaparti are always popular choices.

~2:30pm Try and hail a ride back to town. Can take awhile as the rare passing bus is usually packed to capacity and a half; though we always find a way to either squeeze in.

Jhalawar

"And your name is?"
"Ahh; my name, Gopal."
"Oh, cool cool... are you staying with us now?"
"Two weeks, yes. I stay two weeks, and after going back to Jaipur."

And this is how I met Gopal, the 23 year old IDEX guide born in nearby Jhalawar, at the halfway point of our time here in India. A project executive who'd started working for IDEX only three years earlier and had been set into an arranged marriage only a few months ago (and had also found the time to become a yoga instructor sometime in there too.) Gopal had a sort of sophomoric sense of humor and cheated in carrom (Indian pool) that first night, buut he was always up for a game of cricket and was a lefty too.

Four years his elder and about as many times as mature, Bara Sigfúsdóttir, our new volunteer mate, had ridden the bus with him from Jaipur. The second Icelander I've ever met (both in Rajasthan!), she'd already spent a month in the country, and was on a sort of revisit tour after studying in Bangalore a few summers back. And while she'd also lived a year in Italy and was close to wrapping up a master's in philosophy, it's generally very easy to get along with someone who's a fan of both Muse and traveling, brave enough to travel alone, and able to see the world in a very South Park wise kind of way.

The first time we'd gone to the nearby district capital Jhalawar (Basically: we live in Treynor, Jhalawar is like PottCo's Council Bluffs.. Omaha would be Kota and that's two hours away) it'd only been three of us volunteers. This was on the third day we'd been staying at the house in Patan, and we should've known what was coming when some kids on the bus to Jhalawar excitedly showed us a Hindi newspaper article which featured a picture of us on the front page (headline: "THE FOREIGNERS ARE HERE" maybe?) The picture'd been sneakily taken by a reporter we'd passed the day previous while visiting the Kanjar villages and then printed right there for all in the district to see.

Once in the city, we walked around looking at stuff (oh wow, more tiny retail stores with the same cheaply manufactured things!) and trying to find our way to a fort which the locals were telling us was amazing. We slowly amassed a following of children walking behind us, which then became a mob, and eventually a general exodus of little Indians at our tail; screaming and shouting and pointing out directions to the supposed fort. We got lost in a residential area but walked on. The crowd grew. Fathers could be seen outside their homes pushing their sons towards us, urging them to shake our hands. Cries of "My name is?" (Translation: What is your name?) and "Which country?" and "What hobbies?" (These are the English greeting phrases taught in the schools) suffocated us. We walked by a school house and class was instantly dismissed as everyone ran out to join the march behind us. We ended up just giving up on our quest once to the outskirts of town and the fort still turned out to be miles away and we'd amassed, not exaggerating, a swarm of five dozen child followers surrounding us.

Our failed expedition still within our memories, it wasn't until that first Saturday after Bara and Gopal had arrived that we made a return to Jhalawar. The three of us, Rick, Saroji, Sohan, and Steena, one of the original Patan volunteers who'd recently returned from Denmark to do some writing on India, took a tuktuk to Jhalawar's Gagron Fort. And we actually made it there successfully.

We had a picnic, played some cricket, and generally enjoyed walking through the fort complex enjoying the sights (rapid capped rivers joining a hundred and fifty feet below the outer walls, old ruins, mango trees, shepards guiding their animals and talking on their cells, etc.)





Some other random things:

-We repaired the school roof in our village, Chandya Kehri. Financial backing came from IDEX and a few of the local families, a new currogated steel roof was screwed to a simple rod frame and the whole get up was then cemented to the school. It all made for a nice project and now we can all learn to read even when it sprinkles.




-The national holiday of Raksha Bandham was on a Wednesday a while back. The highways and bus systems were overloaded throughout the week as people everywhere traveled to see family (some of the young married off daughters of Chandya Kehri and nearby Kanjar village Jharel returned from their husband's villages too, much to the delight of their old friends and family). The main ritual here is women giving their brothers and brother like men in their lives bracelets called Rakhis. These are anything from gold to string with foil attached to plastic watches (some of the younger Kanjar children) to elaborate wrist bands (mostly adults). A reporter and three girls came to our house that afternoon to give us a traditional Rakhi and blessing (yes a coconut was involved) and sweets. The reporter, of course, was there to catch the photo op and Rick and Bara were featured on the next day's paper feeding each other the sweets. As Saroji was out that night with family, we celebrated with a pasta (sort of) dinner courtesy Sohan and Steena and made our own holiday traditions.

Black or White?

The two boys living in the house across the alley are the friendliest people I’ve met in India. They will wait outside on their stoop until I walk outside, just to be able to say hello. On one of the first times we ever chatted, the older of the two (about eight or so) brought me a pen and a one page hand written survey. The questions on it were all the typical questions asked by any Indian making friendly conversation (“What is your name? What is your fathers name? Which country? Which village? What are your hobbies?”) and concluded with an exclamatory remark: “INDIA IS THE BEST AMERICA.” I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a threat, compliment, or assertive question, but I took it as friendly and we’ve been cricket mates ever since.

On one occasion, they invited me to their home to take some sibling pictures (their idea, not mine). They also tried to talk their mother or aunt or something into joining but she wouldn’t give in to their demands. One of their elderly women relatives (the extended family lives under one roof) kept making jokes to me and laughing. Camera shy relatives, yippy kid siblings, and a crazy aunt. Being twelve time zones away from my own family but making up for it somewhat by finding myself in the warm company of this one made for a nice afternoon.

Also, my neighbors are Muslims. I’ve been thinking hard, but I believe they’re the first I’ve ever met. Not that it’s all too surprising; ‘Muslims and Hindus are each brothers of mother India,’ as Ben Kingsley reminds us in Ghandi, but it’s probably more surprising that I can’t think of anyone else I know who follows the world’s second biggest religion.

They say India is the World’s Most Multi-Dimensional nation. In a land where 99.9% of the population would probably be considered ‘some sort of brown one’ by American standards, that diversity seems to stem from places other than race.

Religion would be one of those areas. Muslims are Sunnis and Muslims are Shiite. Hindus are Jain or Sikh or one of dozens of others. Christians come in all the familiar flavors. And while there are multi millennial old Buddhist ruins around here, I think they’re more predominant in the south.

Visiting the lakeside park and serene herbal garden in Patan, we once stumbled upon a big pink temple that was built before George Washington was a general. A large man then invited us to stay for the Hindu service that was scheduled to begin in a few minutes. He proudly proclaimed himself a member of the high status Brahmin caste and asked us our caste. At first, I thought he was joking. Once I realized he was serious and we explained that our country didn’t have castes, I could only sit and pretend he was joking. As more respectable looking Hindus filed in and sat on the marble floor (it was a very nice temple, maybe only high status folk can attend?), I wondered what privileges our host had inherited through birth, how he had probably lived his whole life justifying these birth rights with the caste system, and what he’d think of a society sans caste like the US. What would he think if that society told him the caste system was barbaric and should be abolished? Would it be fair to him for us to do that? (We do.) He’s only living his life the way his heritage has for millennia (one of privilege), but would it be fair to the Kanjar not to end that? There are over three thousand castes in India. That’s diversity.

The service consisted of lots of chants and clapping, a door that would open to reveal a golden statue and a guy who would hit a gong to the beat of the chanting, people bowing, a passing around of little tea leaves to eat, and hand movements coordinated with more bowing and eating of tea leaves. Everyone remained standing for the entire service. We then cleared out of the marble floored room and walked to the front courtyard of the temple, where we entered another room filled with bright tinted sunlight. Everyone began chanting again and then doors at the front of the room opened to reveal another big shrine thing and the same guy hitting a gong again. An automated drum machine was turned on and we repeated the whole ritual.

As a kid in weekly Wednesday night Sunday school, we were told that “Thou Shalt not Worship False Idols” meant that we shouldn’t pine over things like video games and new TV’s or bikes or (and this one was emphasized) Pokemon cards. In India, I finally see a truer picture of what the Bible was alluding to because there are A LOT of idols here for worship. In dug out portions of little retail store exteriors, makeshift alters street side, along the ends of the city walls, or just randomly painted things with rocks placed next to them, Hindu shrines are everywhere. Most aren’t as elaborate or impressive as the ones in the fancy Patan temple, but simply rocks carved into round stalactite like shapes and painted orange and covered with foil. I think praying to these in the morning and occasionally giving one of the larger ones an offering is a regular ritual for most. And while I don’t understand what about all this turned the early authors of the Bible off, I really don’t understand or comprehend the idols thing at all.


My favorite temple experience would have been visiting the hilltop fortress here in Patan on a rainy afternoon. Once there, it began to downpour and I was invited to sit on the steps of the elaborate (and somewhat gaudy) temple that had been erected within the decaying fort walls’ courtyard. I sat watching the rain and passing stray dogs with the plump fifty something Indian woman who’d been selling incense at a table before the storm. Not knowing each other’s languages, we just sat under the blaring speakers that had been installed on the foil-mirror plastered ceiling of the temple awning. In a scene that might be from a Wes Anderson flick, we shared coconut and sugar rocks while the awfully high pitched voices of the Hindi women singers drowned out the sound of the rain and the temple guru (who was shouting at his cell phone while sitting cross legged at a shrine inside.)


That fort had been built during the time when the Mughal, Rajput, and Muslim empires were continuously jockeying for control of north western India; conquering land, erecting great structures (the Taj, for example), and then losing the land to a rival empire who’d repeat the process. I think about the long histories of the things around me a lot in India, and the strange situations those things find themselves in contemporary times. How many invading soldiers had been speared off where the loud speaker control panel was now installed? Did the priest who charged his cell behind the Ganesh alter have ancestors who’d toiled under the hot sun to finish the Maharaja’s fort? What does INDIA IS THE BEST AMERICA really mean, anyways?

Camp Jhalrapatan and TV India

We took a Bolero (imitation land rover) from the train station to our house. The ~30km (18 mile) journey took about half an hour due to narrowness of the highway, congestion, lack of street lights, animals and people walking on the streets, and it being generally difficult to navigate a large vehicle through cramped Indian cities at any time, let alone during the busy and dark night shopping period. Along the way and throughout many of the smaller cities scattered along the Rajasthani highways, large crowds of people could be seen gathering around single 22" TVs - what these groups tune into en masse I can only guess.


We reached our house at around 10pm, where our in house cook, translator, guide, and soon to be teaching assistant, Saroji had a large hot dinner waiting. A mother of two (who refused to marry her daughters off until after they had completed a full education), Saroji is self described 'brave woman' -- meaning she is more independent than your average forty something Rajasthani woman ("but not as wishful to be independent as your women of the West"). Accompanying us everyday to class, occasionally team teaching in our village, she never hesitates to bargain or defend on our behalf. As we passed through our front yard gate that first night, Saroji was there to greet us and adorn a traditional red paint dot on our foreheads (which normally signifies marriage but forehead marking can be symbolic for a great variety of other things; perhaps ours was a sort of welcoming wish). Sohan looked visibly happy to be settled back at camp Jhalrapatan.

Saroji's cooking is perhaps the single greatest discovery I've made while in India. Using only fresh ingredients (and you can't get much fresher than locally bought vegetables grown on locally owned and dry-farmed family agro plots), her dinner entrees usually consist of potatoes or okra or ladyfingers covered in various Indian (curry) spices and oils, served aside butter flavored white rice (usually with potatoes or tomatoes), cut fresh vegetables, and a bean and spices soup or two. And with chapati (or naan, but I prefer to call them tortillas). Always with chapati. A lot of it.

Breakfasts are usually some mix of bananas, toast, hard boiled eggs, or japarti stuffed with either potatoes or simply more japarti dough. Meat is never a part of the equation, though she does fry a delicious mixture of vegetables and uniquely savory dough into bite sized morsels with the texture and look of chicken strips. Cheese is a rarity but milk and plain yogurt are not. Soda is relatively expensive (which is to say pop here is priced on par with Walmart back home) and fruit juice is downright extortionate (along with toilet paper, artificial and fruit juices are strangely 'overpriced' -- probably due to some mixture of low demand/low production possibility?) but the food is usually flavorful enough that an old fashioned glass of filtered water is well enough for most days' in-meal beverage.

The house is not air conditioned, instead relying on ceiling and stand fans. Our room does have a water cooler, a sort of humidifyier that uses only cold water and a very big and noisy fan (it says "Snow Cool" on its side), which we're told is actually more effective here than air conditioning. It spends most nights unused because it causes too much cold water to condense on our sheets. There are two lounge spaces with great views on the third story. At night, it provides the best escape from the heat the house traps in its rooms during the day. The view is great and you can often see the celebratory Christmas lights hanging on far off houses (marking a family wedding) or hear Hindi DJs drop beats in the streets for neighborhood dance parties.


We have a high speed internet connection here too which I use to write retroactively on this blog and stay up to date on Facebook (because knowing that the new Harry Potter was 'SUUch a waste of my time' or 'AHHH bestie movie ever' is essential to living a fully satisfied life in India). And while the power (and sometimes water) is shotty, especially during storms and the hottest part of the day, we also have a TV with +70 cable channels.

While tradition still tells women it is inappropriate to show their bare shoulders in public, Indian TV tells us the best way to get the ladies to rip off their clothes is to use Axe. Commercials often fall into one of three categories: actual American commercials (sometimes redubbed in Hindi; ex. Axe, Garnier Fructis), Indian commercials for American products, or Indian commercials for Indian products but with a distintively American marketing flair (ex. Axe imitators which still carry on the typical body spray ad script; see: 'Set Wet' spray -actual heavily advertised product). Ads for condoms and birth control occasionally dawn the small screen (though never in actual daily conversation), and the music, reality, and soap channels always feature the sort of not-so-subtly sexed up styles and motifs normally reserved in the states for the Spanish language stations.

Before coming to India, I never thought the opinions of the nut jobs outcrying that immoral media ruins societies were worth much. But in a society that is adopting an appreciation for tooth brushing and TV concurrently, I'm having second thoughts. I'm not saying that no citizen outside of the G8 can grasp an appreciation of pop TV for what it realistically is, pure entertainment; yet there's no question that the current presence of the kind of popular Indian media that I'm talking about (see: last paragraph) will affect the future mindset of its people differently than the rise of similar popular entertainment forms affected the US in the last twenty/thirty years.

The result, which is already beginning to unravel -- as in the case of Bollywood, will be a national attitude towards its pop culture that will seem to an American vaguely familiar and yet totally strange. An example is the way the Japanese regard their video games or cartoons: both forms of entertainment arose at the same time as their US contemporaries, but the different national and cultural environments the two grew up in resulted in largely varied views of what is acceptable and normal within each (Americans tire quickly of cutesy Japanese characters and become confused with common anime conventions, Japanese largely view American story lines and styles blunt and overly unambiguous).

An India-relevant example would be the road/driving system: its a very typical cultural hallmark within America, but when viewing the Indian way it seems hectic and otherworldly (and dangerous). The difference, obviously, is how the car and modern road system were basically invented and gradually integrated into American life, while India's need for cars came later and quite abruptly post-independence. Only certain aspects of the overseas systems were appropriated while new conventions were invented; the resulting beauty (or terror) can be seen on every Indian road and within any Indian tuktuk driver's methods. You can easily define it as cultural hybridization, localization, or neoglobalism - but deciding whether it is a good or bad thing is a bit trickier.

All I know is that fifteen years ago it was legal here to set your wife on fire if you did so in your house and there was a legitimate reason (you wanted to). Whether or not the hundreds of millions of rural Indian TV viewers contemplate what kind of cultural reformations their ages old country is setting itself up for is unknown. What kind of thoughts they have, as they gather and sit on the dirt in the dozens every night, while watching images of McDonalds, Chevy, Axe, and their sexy Bollywood idols, and how these will in turn affect that very reformation is even more a mystery.

Wolfpack

Nine am sharp, I was told by the broken-armed airport greeter guide. Be in the hotel lobby and prepared for the six hour bus trip from Delhi to Jaipur by nine am. Sharp.

Mathias did not go into the hotel with me. Turns out, he was participating in a different program saving turtles or something in the mountains and would be staying in a different hotel meant for his fellow project mates. As a strange sort of happening, thirty four people had made the same decision as Mathias to participate in the Himachal volunteering program and only three had decided to go with the Kanjar Community volunteering program. And while I am certainly biased, I will say that I had personaly thought that working with discriminated and impoverished children in the desert is probably more hardcore than the yoga-lesson and tiger-sight-seeing loaded Himachal turtle program.

Relieved to escape our cramped car escourt, I was checked in and riding the 3x3 square foot elevator (with a bellhop and my stuff both uncomfortably pressed up against my sides) up to my room by 4:30am Indian time. As the twenty room Hotel le Heritage opts to utilize old fashioned circle locks and keys in place of card reading e-locks, the bellhop ruthlessly held the door buzzer and awaited whoever was inside to wake themselves up and open the door.

Thirty seconds or so later a bearded man opened the door in his underwear and let me in. It was Rick Devoss, of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Another guy, fully extending his arm to avoid getting out of bed, flipped on the light. His name was Magnus Andri. There was a strange sort of silent pause as the three of us (I the only with more than one clothing garment on) looked at each other, the bellhop, and the two single beds pushed side by side in the middle of the room, each individually trying to figure a solution to the inevitable conflict of the three dudes two beds shortage.



When I was in the second grade, I would walk on the painted lines of the LC playground with a friend just about every recess. Together, we would imagine battling monsters and finding nuclear codes to defeat criminal masterminds and all sorts of adventures. Although briefly drifting somewhat apart over the next decade or so, we had plenty of fun messing around on the same little league baseball team, the bench of our little kids' basketball team, at the endless middle school wrestling and high school track meets, basements of the Brads, and the college town bars around Iowa. That friend was Rick Devoss, who then stood before me at 4:40am in some random little hotel room in New Delhi, India. Within a week, we'd be team teaching math and English to a rowdy group of rural Indian children.



The only non-Iowan non-Indian in the room, Magnús Andri Pálsson was the six foot, blonde haired blue eyed guy (later: "What does a typical Icelander look like? Well you're looking at him") trying to explain to the bellhop the beds-to-males ratio problem he apparently wasn't noticing. Already in India for two weeks prior, the twenty five year old was able to settle for an extra blanket and pillow. Growing up obsessively watching American movies to rid himself of the 'terribly awful sounding' accent typical of Icelanders, the former-taxi-driver former-aluminum-smelter had found himself to be a born traveler after a six months backpack through South America. Finished with Europe, he figured to start his next continent with India. After watching his country's economy collapse (suffering massive banking crises) earlier in the year, Magnus boarded a plane, spent a few weeks in the mountainous north of India, and now found himself occupying the same bed as two travel weary Americans.

The three of us comprised the whole of the Kanjar Community Project volunteer staff.

Jhalrapatan 2

Went to a gigantic temple in the middle of the city today. It was an unexpected visit (oh look, there's a six story shrine by that motorcycle shop) but I think the architecture and sheer quantity of relief sculpture is more impressive than the Frankfurt cathedral (a building I looked forward to seeing for three months). Surely it is older by at least a few hundred years.



While inside, two men began to argue with Saroji and we left a bit after. They had wanted us to leave because we were foreigners, and Sarochi had told them off until they caused a scene. It should be noted that there were probably about 15 other people in the temple not creating religious tension, but instead simply resting calmly (isn't that what temples were built for?)



We walked through the main market under the 100+ degree sunlight. One of the British girls we stayed overnight with in Jaipur said being white in India is like being a celebrity because everyone stares at you. If I keep my shades on, I blend in enough to avoid such attention (with the exception that I am the only person over 10 years old I have seen my entire time here wearing shorts), but there are constantly people watching Rick and Magnus no matter what. India, and especially Rajasthan, is not very diverse. The first volunteers sent to Jhalrapatan in 2007 were amongst the first foreigners to be seen in the area. The district is staunchly traditional and without an excess of Western influence. Ah, vacation.


In the city, people ask to take pictures of us. Throughout the trip, young twenty somethings (dressed as if ready to go out to a nice American restuarant) eagerly approach and try to make conversation about the West. Two boys followed me for half an hour talking about English and trying to get me to give them my sunglasses. These babies were a $10 half off sale at UrbanOutfitters, my god are you crazy?!

Saroji also took us to see the hospital. A crowd gathers and the nurses ask where we are from. India's hospitals (like its bus stations and utilities) are government run and provide free universal health care. In a back room of the ward, gigantic boxes of condoms are stored; free for anyone interested. I wonder how many people actually take up such an offer and know that I'll never know because talking about such things is strictly taboo. As is talking about eating beef and inquiring why cows are holy, fyi.

We went into a medium sized fabric shop (probably about the size of the front of the old side of Barley's) and sat on the padded floor with 5 or so employees as Devo chose some cloth to have tailored into a shirt and trous- erm, pants. The store owner came over from his house to talk about America and whatever else and had us served chai tea (I drink alot of it daily.) There was something very cool about three foreigners, a translator/house cook, a wealthy shop owner, and two male employees and a young son of their's surrounded by walls of expensive cloth drinking tea and chatting with the sounds of the street in the background.



At night it starts to rain a bit, and off in the distance Magnus shows me you can see huge monsoon storms rolling over the desertous land. The lightning flashes brilliantly, and highlights for a split second the dozen or so temples, radio towers, buildings of the wealthy, and ancient structures that are visible above the canopy of Jhalrapatan, a city with a population half the size of Council Bluffs but plenty more lively streets and live animals.



Pictures:
Three temple pics.
Random street pic.
Devo and Saroji order their cloth to be cut.
Saroji looks to the street for the fabric shop.



A guy moves a dozer full of gravel a block and half through an alleyway via one bowl of rocks at a time on his head (you can see the city drains I'm so obsessed with on either side of him).

Jhalrapatan

As I sit on the faux-marble porch of the considerably beautiful house that is to be my Indian home for the next two months, a thin cow gnaws at the little grass patches growing on the sides of the alley to my side. I can see its hipbones and ribs. It licks at some garbage on the road. Sitting three feet from it, I notice someone has placed two green necklaces around its neck and an old black cloth on its head in Christ thorn crown fashion.

Suhon asked me if I wanted to go to market with him to get some vegetables. We rode on his motorcycle through crowded (imagine that) alleys and streets and I asked him how old the hilltop fort right next to our house is and he said probably between five centuries and a millennium. I like to think of the fort as Jhalapatan's Dodge House; wondering if they sell stick candy in the basement. The market and streets looked to be fashioned from a scene in Indiana Jones. I talked (hand motions and simple English) with a group of about six boys and young men; asking them for pointers on my cricket technique. One of them showed me the first cricket bat(?) I've ever held and they all agreed I needed more work on my bowling release. I've yet to see any kids playing soccer, everyone is a cricket fan.



Surachi walked Rick and I into town this morning to take some passport photos the IDEX office needed. The shop was staffed by two twenty somethings and two teenaged boys. The older two wore the slender collared button ups and thin slacks/dress pants typical of all guys there age and the boys wore collared shirts. One of them had embroidered jeans, the other a very nice (nicer than my shirts) looking button up shirt that read 'Sturgis' on the back. The main employee used Photoshop to crop our pictures.

Leaving, we stepped down three steps and on a stone someone had placed for walking over the 6 inch wide drain running aside the street. All the streets in the city are flanked by one or two running water drains that constantly flow downhill. I recognize the system from history books. It's the exact same thing the Mesopotamians used in the first human cities, however many millenia ago.

The people step over these little gutters, or on one of the many stones used as mini bridges, whenever they cross the street to avoid cow/people dung or move out of the way of a sheppard and his passing herd or when carefully carrying large pots of water atop their heads. They also step over these ancient public works anytime they enter a store to buy a Pepsi, have digital photos taken/cropped with Photoshop, or buy an American magazine to keep up with the latest (erm, 90's) in fashion. Of course, only the men wear embroidered jeans, collared striped shirts, and western pants. The women all don elaborate cloth garments; often with veils, bangles, necklaces, and other diamond and golden jewelry.



I continue to sit on our stoop, within the three story house's small gated yard, and listen to the music coming out of a car one of our neighbors, sporting a wife beater like shirt, has been working on in front of his house. If not for the little kids playing on piles of rubble and cow eating weeds to my other side, or the fact that the music playing is some sort of Hindi-Arabic dance mix, the scene the same as it'd be in America. Of course, the environment is totally something you could only see in an American film. Our house has two stories of outdoor rooftop built for lounging and makes me believe I am Jason Borne.



And after two and a half days under the Indian sun, I can finally muster a description of what I see:

To picture Rajasthan, simply imagine that medieval Europe was suddenly infused with certain twentieth century technology (cars, some electricity, cell phones, radio towers) and then tried to imitate the popular culture of the modern United States and the traditional look and architecture of Arabia. There are still herds of sheep being moved through town, crowded Aladdin-esque markets in alleys between two and three story middle eastern looking buildings, all the women wear brightly colored cloth clothing (some covering their faces), the men wear slacks and jeans, people walk the streets texting, animals poop in the streets, ancient temples rest on hilltops, shops sell European goods, and hindi/arabic music can be heard from the various loudspeakers of ceremony, SUV, and prayer. Population-explosion, visual-orgasm, social-contradictions, cultural-collage, sensory-overload, India.



Pictures:
The next door neighbors (click it to see a slightly bigger version).
Crowd of people takes a break from the crowded marketplace on a temple stoop.
Random street pic.
Nice guy running a booth at a vegetable market, his younger friends are playing cricket an aisle over.
Young kid named Jai using my shades to be a stunna' like his daddy.
Two more roadside pics.