What's in Your Field?

We have peacocks in ours!

We're Not in Delhi Anymore

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our Colourful Home

Nearly three months after settling into our Delhi apartment, I took some "snaps" to share with the rest of you, and eight months later, I'm finally posting them; for safety reasons I thought it wiser to wait till we moved.  Welcome to our home!

Looking straight back the hallway through the front door.

This first room is our dining/study area.  Second on the left is the kitchen, followed by a bathroom-cum-laundry room, spare bedroom, and the master bedroom at the end of the hall.

 Our dining/study room and table.

 It's hard to tell in these pictures, but the walls are pale yellow.

One of my aesthetical favourites about our apartment is the ceilings.

Here, the yellow dining/study room ceiling on the right,

and the pink hallway ceiling on the left.

Our kitchen!  Actually, this was one of the things that sold me on this apartment.  I knew we'd be spending a lot of time in here, so when I saw this kitchen - spacious, with lots of countertop space - it was love at first sight.  Clockwise from the bottom left:  green-handled broom; dustbin (trash can) and dustpan; drying rack; water purifier; gas stove; cooking oil, an essential in every Indian dish; fridge; Domino's and Pizza Hut flyers on the fridge.  And hidden in the top right corner, in the window above the stove, is an exhaust fan.  Which helps to remove some of the hot air, but doesn't do a whole lot for keeping the cooks cool while cooking.  Because everyone uses gas stoves, as a safety measure, there are no overhead fans in the kitchen.  Which explains how the kitchen comes to be 90+ F in the summers.

Bathroom-cum-laundry room.  That's our colourful washer and rinser on the left :)

Master bedroom, complete with makeshift curtain. Temperature-wise, the coolest room in the house.
 

Master bathroom.  Aka "wet bathroom," very common in India.  Above the toilet is a geyser (pronounced "geezer" by Indians), since homes don't come with a centralized water heater.

The picture on the right is our shower.  There is no ledge to stop the water from running out (hence the name "wet bathroom", but the floor is slightly angled so that the water runs into the drain.

Our choti-choti (very small) back deck and clothesline.

(And don't miss those trees in the background!)

ETAs Visit the Village

We departed at 5:30 Saturday morning for one very bumpy car ride to the village.

Stephanie and Aileen

Nick

Stephanie battled the bumps and tried to sleep.

 

 

Enjoying lunch, Indian style!

 Everyone was keen to sleep on the roof--not something we get to do every day in the US.

The sky was clear and starry, and the mosquitoes didn't hang around for too long.

Good morning, sleepy heads!  We all were pretty exhausted.

Joanna

Kim

Stephanie in the background, Kim, Aileen, Joanna, Abby in the foreground, and Amma (paternal grandmother) in the blue sari

My mother-in-law used cement to mount these broken glass bottles on top of the brick wall surrounding the rooftop to keep away the pigeons and monkeys.  This shot is taken on the roof looking out from the backside of the house.

Another shot of early morning India from the rooftop.

On Sunday, Amma Ji invited us over to her house.  There we enjoyed more sweets and aloo/pyaaj pakora (fried potato and onion).  And got "bindied" by Amma, who seems to be a popular favorite!

 

Kim gets bindied!

So does Jo...

And Stephanie...

Aleen bindies Amma...

...and then gets bindied herself.

Jo's beautiful mehendi/masquerade

Kim gets silly with some of the village boys who stopped by.

Amma wanted us to go on the roof to see all the cow patties she's made so that we have something to remember her by when we go back to the US.  These are special cow patties.  Most are only half this size.  If you look closely, you can see a finger mark pattern in the patties.  These will be burned for fuel.

Now Jo can officially say that she's touched a cow patty!

These four are still in the process of drying.

...more pictures to come soon!

Five Thousand Views!

Soon after I got my acceptance letter from the Fulbright foundation in India last year, I began perusing past participants' blogs to learn as much as I could about what to expect during the following year.

Of course, anyone who has been to India before knows that the only thing you can really expect in India is the unexpected.

Still, when it came time to create my own blog, I admit that I endeavored to make it a real hit, especially with prospective Fulbright grantees.  Specifically I hoped that it might answer some of the questions that I had around this time last year.

Initially I had the idealistic intentions of blogging regularly about my experiences inside and outside the school walls.

Then India happened.

And the frequency of my posts declined dramatically, much to the dismay of my family back home.

Yet, despite my irregular and sometimes unfinished posts, this blog has managed to receive over five thousand views (whether purposely or accidentally) since July of last year.  During this time I have been delighted to hear from several readers, future travelers or expats to India, and prospective Fulbright applicants.

Now it is less than two months till the completion of my Fulbright grant.  Nowadays in addition to teaching, I am also taking Hindi classes and studying for my Social Studies teaching exam.  Add the regular housework, dishes, and laundry on top of that (we decided not to hire a maid), and you will have some idea as to the cause of my virtual disappearance from the virtual world.

So, thanks for reading, and do keep checking back.  I shall continue developing this blog as time (and India) allows.

All the best,
-ashley