My Fulbright grant officially ended yesterday.
It literally seems like I was just in my college dorm room,
sitting at my desk, trying to figure out who my fellow ETAs would be during
these nine months. I knew this year
would pass by quickly, but I guess I didn’t realize kitna quickly, how much
quickly. Now all of my Fulbright bhai-bahin are starting to fly
home. Or to Korea. A few are hanging around for a while longer,
to dance in a final kathak performance.
Or to travel the subcontinent.
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| Straight ahead is the guest house, temple on the left. |
I presently find myself in the holy Hindu city of Mathura,
the birthplace of the blue-skinned, flute-playing, peacock-feather-wearing
deity, Lord Krishna. My husband has
recently taken a teaching position at a university here. And get this, he’s teaching Spoken English of
all things! Actually we are staying in Vrindavan,
Mathura’s next door neighbor, and the city where Lord Krishna actually spent
his childhood. But don’t get the wrong
impression when I say “city,” we are actually staying in a relatively rural
part of the city.
Make that very
rural.
In our previous visits to my sasooral (literally: my father-in-law’s house), it always left me
befuddled when my husband would tell me in the morning, “I am going to the
field,” and then not return for another hour.
Or I would wake up to find that he was not there and, upon his return, I
would ask frantically of his whereabouts.
He would then inform me, casually, “Oh, I was in field,” as if this
should have been obvious.
I didn’t completely understand then what all went down in
the field, but I sure do now.
Early each morning while I make our two cups of
ginger-cardamom chai, I can look out
the window above our gas stove and see the local villagers, usually men,
pooping in the field behind our guest house.
When I open the front door and look over the balcony, in the brush field
to my left there are people pooping too.
There are usually smaller children in this field, but all poop the same
way. First, carry either a plastic
bottle or tin can of water to the field.
Then, find a good place to squat (one that’s free from briars and other
poop, I imagine). Next, drop your
drawers (if you’re a man) or raise your sari
(if you’re the occasional woman), squat, and do your business. When the business is finished, use the right
hand to poor the water into the left hand, which does the wiping. Rinse left hand with water, raise your drawers
(or drop your sari), and walk
nonchalantly back in the direction from which you came.
In all seriousness, it is so peaceful here. It's
much quieter than Delhi, which is nice for the absence of honking, but that also makes it more
difficult to get our daily needs, like milk and vegetables. And our refrigerator is no longer with us, so
they really are needs that have to be acquired daily. Fortunately it is not too far out of the way
to stop at the vegetable market on the way to guest house from the university,
and we have a milkman who brings us fresh milk from the local village each
evening.
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| A better shot of the temple under construction. Almost seems like something from Candyland, hai na? |
I’m pretty sure we are currently the only ones staying in
this guest house next to Ma Gita Mandir, aside from Ma Gita Ji herself, and the
occasional Indian family visiting this hallowed ground. Mata Ji, as she said I could call her, is a
pleasant woman whom I suppose to be in her early-to-mid thirties. She designed the temple, Ma Gita Mandir, that
is being built in front of the guest house rooms. Construction on the temple started seven
years ago, and it should be completed two months from now. It is an impressive work of beautifully
molded concrete, and carved marble and stone.
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| Wild parrots on the temple ledge! |
My favorite part of this temple, though, has to be the
colours. Later in the morning (after the
pooping people have vacated the fields), lustrous green parrots, two to nine at
a time, fancy to perch on one of the temple ledges that we can see from our
balcony. There vibrant green feathers
are the most beautiful contrast against the salmon and tangerine temple. If I was a skeptic of color therapy before,
India has definitely made me a believer.
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| The view from our balcony, with parrots! |
(And I do realize I spelled “color” two different ways in
the previous paragraph. I thought that
the first one merited the British “u.”
It kind of grows on you after you’ve been here for a while.)
In the mornings, instead of roosters, we wake to the sounds
of peacocks. On our last
visit to thevillage, with some of the ETAs, we came to the consensus that a peacock
sounds like a human trying to imitate the sound of a cat’s meow. Indeed, it does. But trust me when I say that it’s a much more
peaceful alarm clock than it may seem.
By the way, have you ever seen a peacock sitting in a tree? It is one of the most awkward things I have
ever seen. They are beautiful, yes they
are. But it is a mystery to me how those
turkey-size birds can sit so gracefully on a twig-like branch. Talented fellas, they are.
One afternoon I was studying in our room and heard a kind of
swishing sound through the window screen behind me. I got up and looked down from our second
floor window to find two horses wading through the little river running behind
our guest house. I guess they thought
the greens looked greener on the other side.
Sure enough, the horses come every day around the same time, like
clockwork.
Lots of things run like clockwork here.
If you’re awake before 7 AM you can likely find people squatting
in the fields. At the same time you can hear the peacocks mewing from the
trees, as well as the morning readings from the loudspeaker of a nearby temple. A little later in the morning, the chubby green parrots will
land and hop on the salmon and tangerine ledge of the mandir. Between 11 and 11:30 AM, the horses will come to cross the
river for grazing, and the white heron-type birds will look on from their perch
on the brick wall above the river bank. Between three and four in the afternoon a few stragglers may
come to the field to complete late “business” transactions. At this time of year the afternoons in north India tend to be rather quiet as it’s too hot to do anything besides rest.
In the evening, the peacocks will again sing while we wait
for the milkman.
Eventually everything quiets down, the stars come out, and
sleep arrives.
Then the sun rises, and another day in India
begins.
