I have received complaints about my last few e-mails. I have been told that what I write is depressing and after reading, one feels like 1) having me sent home, or 2) sending me a care package for everyday I am here. Not to worry. While it is definitely one of the least-safe places my parents could possibly allow me to go as a woman, I have a good head, so far I have made intelligent decisions, and if nothing else, India has taught me to be much less trusting, which I have been told might be a good thing. I think I will be slightly jaded when I return, but I will also become shockingly more aware and appreciative of my American culture. The bad things are what make for the good stories and so, that it what I report back. Do know though, India is not at all bad; it is a crazy, stressful, very amazing and wonderful time. I am learning a ton, making incredible friends, eating great food, and having experiences that I only dreamt I would be lucky enough to have. But, I would bore everyone to death if I just told you that I liked it, I saw some monkeys and temples, I do my laundry and my bathing in the same bucket, and that I missed everyone. So, on that note: Stop reading if you are a compulsive worrier. This is India. India and I have an incredible love/hate relationship. I love the culture and the hospitality. I am living with a new host family that is wonderful and treats me like royalty. I go to festivals and I am taken in like a celebrity. People tell me they admire me (mostly for having dimples, a sign of beauty I hear,) love to hear me speak, and act as though it is the greatest honor to speak with me. The food is wonderful and I love the way I can make any Indian's day by telling them my favorite food is Indian food. I love chai, I love the fruit, and I absolutely love the dedication they have to family and friends. I now find their perpetual tardiness charming and love never having a schedule. My professors miss class because their bus broke down, or more often, because there was a strike in the city and the roads were blocked by angry mobs. I also think the language barrier is endearing. Petrol fuel trucks are decorated in colorful, bright letters that say, "Caution: highly inflammable." It is just so stereotypically India! I have even come to terms with the most dangerous roads in the world: I have decided that, under no circumstance, will I ever allow myself to think I will die in a car crash in India. Even when I am sitting in the back of a top-heavy SUV and facing sideways without a seat belt. There is always a semi-truck ahead, another coming the other direction, a pack of goats to the right, and three cows to the left, and a cliff beyond that, I do not think about dying. Instead, I put my energy into appreciating the fact that I did NOT and will not die. I just sit there and marvel at the incredible skill it takes to drive an enormous 4-wheel drive vehicle in such adverse conditions and at such speeds.
But, at other times, being in India is like having one of those nightmares where you walk into a theater and everyone turns around and stares at you. Wondering why, you look down and realize you are completely naked and your first impulse is to turn around and run, but then you realize you can't because there is no escape. For a blonde, India is also like being Pamela Anderson at a trailer park. While the other two girls get stares, it is nothing like it is with me, and sometimes it makes me hate India. It has become a group-wide joke, Blonde Annie and Her Hoards of Men. Whenever I walk home from school, I have to go in a round-about way so that I can lose my followers before they see where I live. I have hidden in trees, behind cars, and even squatted in a ditch. I had wondered why I got so much more attention until my host mom lovingly explained that is was because I "have hair the color of the prostitutes." After that, I noticed that in every advertisement, the sexy, ho-bag girl is always blonde. So, I am guilty by association and have to endure questions like, "how much sex do you have?" and "I pay you 500 rupees, you come?" Thankfully, my roommate is Indian and she has taught me defensive swear words that seem to shock them into silence long enough for me to escape. Sadly, this foul treatment of women is the product of years of male dominance and religions and social practices that hold men on a higher pedestal. Reminders that women are inferior are everywhere. As a result of the dowry system, every year in India, around 125,000 women are killed by their husbands or in-laws in "accidental" burnings or car accidents. Though the dowry has been officially outlawed, it is still very much an issue in the 80% of the population that remains rural. At the time of marriage, a girl's family is expected to provide her future husband's family with an enormous sum of money. Often, the amount is equivalent to 4 years of the girl's family's income. If the new family doesn't consider the amount suitable, instead of refusing the marriage, the new family will make the new wife into a kind of indentured servant and should she still not prove useful, they will force her to take out multiple life insurance policies and then fake her accidental death in order to claim the money and allow the husband to remarry, and therefore receive another dowry. The wife is also expected to produce a son because sons are considered to be much more profitable to the family. This belief has resulted in a high rate of infanticide, in which, for fear of humiliation, exile, or even murder by the family, women will do anything they can to destroy evidence that they gave birth to a girl. Women dispose of girl babies by leaving them in dumpsters for dogs, the middle of the road to be hit, or by drowning them. Their husbands support this practice completely. Marriages are also still arranged in almost all Indian families. In some small villages, girls and boys are wed by age 1 or 2. They are then forced to live together as soon as the girl "matures," and begin producing male offspring. Abuse, neglect, and adultery run rampant. Women are killed for infidelity; meanwhile, men often have mistresses and are seldom penalized in any way. Their wives are expected to suffer in silence, as it is their fault their husbands look elsewhere. What is interesting is that in the bigger cities, laws to imprison both men and women for committing acts of adultery are strongly adhered to. Unsurprisingly, men are almost never charged unless the woman was married and her husband presses charges. What I find most frustrating is that women accept this treatment. My Hindi teacher, for example, is an extremely educated woman from a wealthy Hindu family. Everyday she complains to us about the way women are treated in this country. She tells us that her father gave her less food, never bought her good clothes, and then married her off to a man that she met at her wedding. She says boys are given preferential treatment and it is unfair, yet she has a son that she treats the same way. Her husband tells her how to dress, where to go, and with whom she can associate. She supports herself financially, which he approves of, but her mother-in-law (who chose her to be her daughter-in-law) cannot stand her and is constantly accusing her of stealing her husband's money whenever she wears something nice. She tells us that she loves her husband and constantly assures us that she is in a "very happy marriage," but she is the property of her husbands and wears her red tikka to show she is married, three rings, a toe ring, and very conservative clothes at the order of her husband. She loves to talk to us and can't believe that we could possibly have "dated" many boys in our lives. She even explained to me yesterday that there is a "horrifying trend here among young Indian boys which they call 'french kissing' where they stick their tongues in girl's mouths." She assured me that if her husband tried such a thing, she would "vomit on his face." I chose not to say anything.
Enough complaining, here is a funny story: A few days ago, I was at a museum in a small town outside Udaipur in the S.W. region of Rajasthan. Like many places we go, tourists were are, and we received more attention than the museum itself. While waiting for a glass of sugarcane juice, I had my first celebrity moment. It takes a while for the cane juice to be produced. A cow is hooked up to a huge bar and forced to walk in a circle—over and over. As he walks, a man feeds the sugarcane stalks into a machine that squishes the canes into juice. Apparently, it is NOT ok to kill a cow, but it is definitely ok to make the cow want to kill itself. Feeling bad for the cow I thought about throwing my eight rupees at the man whipping him and wrestling the cow free, but someone tapped me on my shoulder. It was a lady holding a baby, and her husband, sister, sister's husband, children, mother, father, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and God knows who else. They were all staring at me with these crazy smiles of admiration, touching my skin and grabbing at my hair. Finally, the husband said, "please ma'am, hold my baby for snap a click." In India (yet another thing to love,) taking pictures is called "snapping clicks" and this man and his entourage, wanted me to hold their baby for a photo. I thought he was joking. I laughed and said something stupid like, "oh, cute baby, its funny how all Indian babies are cute" and turned back to the cow. He then grabbed my shoulder, turned me, and his wife placed the infant child in my arms. The baby had a little bindi on its forehead and was wearing gorgeous sparkly bangles. The photo was atrocious and I have attached it to this e-mail. I was so uncomfortable that I ended up looking like the most un-nurturing, unloving mother on the planet, and after seeing the photo, have started to doubt whether I am meant to have children. The family was so happy though. They all clapped, tilted their heads, bobbled them in typical Indian fashion, smiled, and put their hands together in prayer, telling me that my wealth and success would surely rub off on their baby if they framed the picture. Poor child, I think that my parents can vouch that mediocre grades and a part-time restaurant job aren't really the makings for success. I should have chased them down and told them the truth, but I was too busy basking in the glow of my inflated ego. Since then, I have held a few other babies, and everywhere I go in my small, conservative hometown, people reach out to touch my skin and my hair. I have stopped minding that I am cursing every child that I touch, and have convinced myself that if they are going to be strange enough to frame a photo of me for their mantle, they deserve the curse. Plus, it's India, there is an economy in everything: they get their photo, I get a good story to tell. I went to the neighboring towns of Ajmer and Puskar this weekend. They are interesting because though they are separated by only 22 kilometers and a hill, Ajmer is a Muslim city and Pushkar is very strictly Hindu. They are built on big lakes and called the "sister cities" because their layouts are very similar. Both cities are pilgrimage sites for their respective religions and, even though this causes populations to swell and everything to become crowded in chaotic, they coexist in complete harmony. Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometers North, Kashmir and the Northern states are at constant odds with Pakistan, even with the separation of an entire desert. We rented a $4-a-night room in Ajmer with a squat toilet, an eau-de-turpentine aroma and no shower to speak of. We went to two of the holiest sites in India, were ripped off by priests, discovered the infamous "Pushkar Ganga Pizza", and hit a cow. Overall, I would say quite a successful trip, full of crazy experiences that I will have to save for another e-mail as this is getting very long. I do think it is worthwhile to let you know that two days after we stood outside the holiest mosque in India and posed for the picture I have attached with the scarfs on our head, the Sufi mosque was bombed and 2 people died and 17 were injured. The bomb went off two feet from where we stood in that picture, a little disconcerting. They are unsure who is responsible for the bombing at the moment, but the theory is that it was a group of fanatic Shiite Muslims from Bangladesh that oppose the beliefs of the Sufis. Because the Sufis and Shiites lived in veritable peace until the invasion of America in Iraq, people are not entirely happy to have Americans in the area at present. We usually tell everyone that we are Canadian and when we return to Ajmer in a few weeks for our professor's wedding, we are going to be very careful to avoid public gathering places and have been offered rooms in the family's home and will be fed all of our meals there to ensure our safety. At present, the U.S. State department has not put up any warning against American travel in Ajmer but there are fairly legitimate fears of more attacks as the election season approaches. But, we have asked around and everyone has told us we are safe as long as we stay with families and that Ajmer is no less safe than Jaipur. So, c'est la vie! What an incredible experience! Hope all is well! Miss you all and I can't wait to come home to a hot shower, soft bed,the peaceful countryside and safe cities.
