Serve...Set...Spike!

American men of a certain generation (that is: mine) cannot play volleyball without a bit of irony, thinking of the famously incongruous scene in the movie Top Gun where Tom Cruise and his buddies spend a few uncomfortable moments playing sweaty, shirtless beach volleyball, whilst grunting and diving all over each other.

Safe to say, the boys at JM have never seen Top Gun, or if they have it has not affected the gravity with which they approach the sport. On Thursday and Friday last week, the Class IX and X boys played in a surprisingly competitive volleyball tournament. Four teams, round-robin style. An ultimate victor crowned in the final game Friday afternoon. The entire school let out of class so students could crowd themselves around the courtyard in hushed, anticipatory groups to watch the action, letting out high-pitched vibrating screams whenever a good play occurred.

I snapped a few pictures during the 'championship' match on Friday.

The game, viewed from the second-floor balcony.

Students intently watching from the second floor.

Students packed into the front patio to watch the game in the courtyard.

Students dragged benches out of their classrooms so they could be more comfortable watching the match from the patio area.

Teachers announced the lineups and the score over teh PA system and handed out trophies after the tournament.

A red flag suddenly appeared moments after the 'red team' won the championship. Students--many of whom had not played--mobbed each other like the Berlin Wall was falling down again.

Three Amigos...Minus One

View the pictures and read the entry that follows.

The Netway Boys: Nahas, Shaheed, and Mustapha.

The farewell party.

At dinner: Mustapha, the 'man of the night', is in the foreground.

Nahas ordered grape juice, which had us puckering our lips it was so sweet. Peeled white grapes floated in the syrupy mixture.













The boys chowing down.






No dining experience in India would be complete without a misspelling in the menu. Though this one is rather memorable.




Mustpaha, Nahas, and Shaheed grew up together in Tirur. They went to primary school together, played football and badminton together. They all attended Calicut University and all got Bachelor’s of Commerce degrees. (“Be-Comms”, they say with delight.) Last May, they went into business together, starting a small Internet café and computer repair shop at the Payannangadi junction in Tirur.

The three have been inseparable. Until now.

This weekend, Mustapha is leaving for Kuwait. He will be gone two years. It is a common enough story here in Kerala but one that has a little more resonance now, at least for Jenna and me.

On Friday, Jenna and I along with our roommate Jaime attended a ‘farewell dinner’ for Mustapha at a Tirur restaurant. Nahas and Shaheed were there, of course, along with several of their friends from Calicut University, all of whom had gone into business around Tirur and spoke with the confident, avuncular manner of businessmen.

The mood was light and Nahas ordered several rounds of food—beef and chicken shawarma, chicken 65 (Indian fried chicken), pickled cucumbers and carrots, roti bread. He looked pleased to play the role of dinner host.

Mustapha arrived last and the long table of guests erupted into spontaneous cheering when he walked up, a broad smile on his face. The other diners in the outdoor patio area where we were sitting looked over curiously for a second then went back to their own meals.

Conversation was sparse and mostly in Malayalam. The men spent most of their energy grabbing bits of chicken or dipping roti into one of several sauces that had been laid out. Though Mustapha would leave to go halfway around the world the following day, there appeared to be no sadness or reflective melancholy in the group. The men all laughed, joked, and took dozens and dozens of pictures. The flash from various cameras punctuated the shadowy dimness of the patio every few seconds.

I had asked Nahas a few days earlier whether he was sad Mustapha—his best friend—was leaving for a country so far away.

“No, no, no,” he said earnestly. “I am used to this. My father goes to Gulf for many years now. My brother goes to Gulf. Other friends go. Mustapha goes now. Not sad. Happy for him.”
"But you really must be kind of sad?" I pressed.

"No, it is common. Very common," Nahas replied, grinning broadly.

Nahas was not being coy. He was simply stating facts of life in central Kerala. Nearly every family in Tirur seems to have at least one male working in the Gulf. They go to be construction workers and drivers in the UAE, accountants and office help in Kuwait, computer technicians in Oman. They make more money than they would in Kerala and send remittances back to their families. You can see signs of their success very visibly in the houses their families build—two and three-story estates made of concrete, marble, and burnished teak, opulent by Kerala standards.

Nahas’s family lives more modestly in a one-story bungalow at the end of a winding jungle path just outside Tirur. But the money his father earned working more than 20 years in the Gulf helped put Nahas through private primary school and a well-respected university.

Many of the students at JM have a father or an older brother, an uncle or a brother-in-law working in the Gulf. A teacher, who is the mother of two children under 10 years old, has a husband who is in the Gulf. Young men, in fact, come into Nahas's internet cafe (Netway Computers) all the time brandishing resumes and applications for positions in the Gulf that they need copied. (One of the first questions on these applications usually asks what languages the applicant speaks.)

Mustapha, then, is just the latest in a very long line of men from this area who have left to find wealth (modest or otherwise) in the Middle East. His brother-in-law is working in Kuwait now as a driver and will put Mustapha up in his apartment there. Mustapha has yet to secure a job but seems confident he will find one.

“Why?” I had asked Mustapha a few days prior to this night. “I mean, your business here seems to be going pretty well. The Internet café is good now. Why move so far?”

Mustapha had smiled and, honestly, he may not have understood my question completely. But he responded, “More money.” And he pointed to a vague far-off point in the distance, meaning the Gulf.

The dinner broke up quickly and the men started to go their separate ways. A few more pictures were taken and Mustapha started to receive hugs from his college friends. Shaheed and Nahas lingered on the edge of the group.

One of their friends volunteered to drive Jenna, Jamie and I back to our flat in his car. As the car pulled up to the curb, Mustapha said goodbye to each of us. He shook my hand and then brought me into his embrace for a hug. A long, formal hug where you quickly peck each cheek of the other man with a light kiss. It was the first time all night where I got a little sad.

“Good luck,” I said. “Be careful.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling, his arm still draped over my shoulder.

At that moment, I could only imagine if Mustapha had been my best friend or my brother or my father, and I was saying goodbye to him for two years. I glanced at Nahas and Shaheed and tried to guess what was going on inside their heads.

JM Life

I'm taking the easy way out today. I've just posted some pictures I have taken around JM School the past few weeks. Enjoy!

Republic Day: students looking serious as they line up for a brief Republic Day celebration in JM's courtyard.

The Republic Day singers: this group of Clas VIII girls (13-14 years old) sang the national anthem and the school's daily prayer as part of Republic Day celebrations. Their blue and purple uniforms mark them as India Scouts. The girl on the far right Khadeeja will also sometimes read headlines from the English-language paper The Hindu over the school's PA.

"Classroom technology", India style. Chalk and a chalkboard.

Scene from "PT time", or gym class. Boys love to play soccer (like kids in most parts of the world besides America) but volleyball seems to be the most popular sport. Most of the boys simply play without shoes.

Some Class X boys (15-16 years old) playing volleyball, gearing up for this week's JM School volleyball tournament.

Boys mugging for the camera.

Lend Me Your Ears

The Indian flag flying over the courtyard at JM Higher Secondary School. Check out the pictures from the school's Republic Day celebration and read the post that follows.

At ease: students holding the 'parade rest' position while they follow the Republic Day ceremony.

The 'guest of honor' raising the Indian flag.

Speaking at a Republic Day event in India has never been on my ‘bucket list’. But if it had been, I would have been able to check it off today.

I found myself Wednesday morning suddenly and quite unexpectedly giving a patriotic pep talk to about 100 JM students, most of whom probably understood very little of my rambling, two-minute oration since it was in English.

JM and all other schools in India had the day off Wednesday to celebrate Republic Day, the national holiday in India that commemorates the signing of the Indian Constitution in 1950. All the state capitals hold big celebrations, and the national capital Delhi conducts a massive parade of all the armed forces down the Raj Path—that city’s version of the Champs Élysses. Likewise, there are more modest gatherings at schools and public buildings across the country. Such was the intimate ceremony at JM Higher Secondary Jenna and I attended.

We arrived not knowing what to expect. The headmistress the day before had told us attendance was voluntary. When we asked if we could come to the Republic Day ceremony anyway, she gave us a look that said, “Why would you want to?” but then said, “If you like.”

A smattering of teachers showed up and maybe 100 students, most of whom were members of the Indian Scouts—a co-ed version of the American Boy Scouts—dressed in their blue and purple uniforms, boys with cloth berets and girls with sharp two-piece suits belted tightly at the waist.

We stood around the courtyard with the other staff members while more students slowly trickled onto the campus. At 9:30, the Scout leader—a young teacher who I had seen around campus but whose name I did not know—called the assembly to order. He called over the other teachers, and gave swift, clipped instructions in Malayalam for the students to line up in front of the flagpole.

He walked over to me and took my arm. He said in a low voice, “You are a guest of honor here. Would you please help hoist the flag?”

A simple enough procedure, I thought. I had done it plenty of times as a Boy Scout myself when I was younger. The Scout leader guided me to the flagpole, where I lined up next to him and a few other staff members in front of the ordered lines of students. They all came rigidly to attention when the Scout leader barked a sudden command.

“Attention!”

The students straightened their backs and thrust their arms down to their sides, their fingers pointing to the ground. A look of grave seriousness overcame their faces, their lips pressed together, their brows furrowed.

“Prayer!” the Scout leader commanded. A group of five girl scouts, huddled in a semi-circle at the front of the assemblage, sang quickly through the school’s prayer, the same one that is sung at the start of every school day.

“At ease!” the Scout leader ordered after the prayer. The students collectively put their hands behind their backs and parted one leg to create the position of military parade rest.

The Scout leader spoke a few guttural words in Malayalam. Some students nodded and all followed him with their eyes. A few boys at the back peered momentarily up at the bright golden sky overhead.

I heard the Scout leader mutter the words, “English teacher-ah..." in the midst of his speech, which drew my attention. I saw him flick his head in my direction, then he glanced down at his palm, which had my name written on it in black ink. “English teacher-ah…Kyle,” he said. My name came out sounding like: “Kii-eel.”

The Scout leader glanced at me, nodded affirmatively and began to undo the rope at the bottom of the flagpole. A group of students had already connected the flag to the hoisting rope, so all I had to do was grasp the rope and pull the slack end so the flag was pulled to the top. As it rose, the Indian tri-color unfolded to reveal the bluish circle of the spinning wheel, the symbol for India’s Independence struggle.

I remembered my Scoutmaster’s instructions from when I was a boy, “Slow going up, fast coming down.” I made the effort to raise this foreign flag with all the deliberateness I could muster with 100 pairs of eyes staring at my back.

When it reached the top, the Scout leader tied the rope off. Then he patted me on the shoulder, “You must say a few words.”

No I mustn’t, I thought. But at the same time, I felt refusing to speak at a patriotic rally when I was the ‘guest of honor’ would be like turning down tea at a British manor. Possible, just very rude.

I cleared my throat. I looked out at the small congregation of students, still at ease in their orderly lines. I began uncertainly.

“You all know me. I’m Kyle…the Spoken English teacher. Some of you know my wife Jenna,” I motioned to Jenna who was standing off to the side, in a vain attempt to get her to join me. She smartly demurred.

“Um…we are very happy to be here and to share this special day with you,” I said, trying to keep my sentences simple and short. “This is an important day. This is a holiday. I hope you enjoy your holiday. And think about all the people in India who have come before you. Think of all the history about this day. Think about what made this country what it is. I feel very lucky to be here, and we are very happy to be a part of this. Thank you for letting me put up your flag on this special day.”

Not exactly the Gettysburg Address but not bad for being off-the-cuff either. I nodded to the Scout leader that I was finished.

“Now: clap!” he commanded, and the students broke out into a rhythmic series of claps that pierced the quiet windy morning. Clap! Clap! Clap-clap-clap! Clap! Clap! Clap-clap-clap!

Another teacher sang a traditional Hindi song and the event ended with the students and teachers together singing the Indian national anthem Jaya Hind.

As they sang, the flag I had helped raise flapped soundlessly in the breeze, its orange, white and green bars unfurling over the sight of Kerala palm trees. I peered up at it and mentally edited my 'bucket list'.

A Good Student

A picture of Jesni's class. She is the one at the back making 'bunny ears' over two other girls' heads.




When Jesni asked me the other day whether I had been a ‘good student’ in school, even if I had not been one, I felt I would have had to lie. Because Jesni is the type of girl you don’t want to disappoint.

“Yes, I was good,” I replied honestly. “But I don’t think as good as you.” Again, with all sincerity.

This made Jesni smile, which is a beautiful sight, for she has a finely drawn mouth with elastic lips that seem to stretch nearly to the corners of her eyes when she cracks a grin. For a 14-year-old, she carries herself with a rather regal bearing. Her English is nearly unaccented, and you can see her mental gears shifting and turning whenever she is enunciating her words, as if she would be mightily disappointed in herself if she made a mistake.

“Sir…thank you, sir. I hope…that I am…good,” she said with a startling gravity.

Our conversation had started because I had seen Jesni the previous Saturday at the Tirur bus stand. It was a little past nine in the morning, and I was on my way to buy a newspaper. I saw Jesni as she was boarding a bus and she happened to glance back and see me.

“Where were you going Saturday?” I asked the next week at school.

“To my home.”

“What were you doing in Tirur?”

“Tuition classes. Special classes I take in the morning from seven to nine.”

“Every Saturday?”

“No. Every day but Sunday.”

“Every day?”

“But Sunday, yes. Hindi. Social Science. English. Maths. Biology. Special classes so I can get more knowledge."

“Where are the classes?”

“In a building near the bus stand.”

“You are a very good student.”

Again, the smile and Jesni blushed. “Thank you, sir. I want to be a civil engineer. I must take lots of classes.”

“Well, your English is very good.”

“Thank you, sir. But it can be better.”

It turned out, though, that Jesni’s English was far better than my Malayalam. She blanched when I revealed the pitiful state of my Malayalam.

“But how long have you lived here, sir? Three months? And that little?” she held up her index finger and thumb in the international symbol for ‘tiny’.

“How about the numbers? One…two…three…” she said, with the desperate air of a crack teacher.

I shrugged my shoulders.

Jesni held up her index finger rigidly. “One…own-ay. Two…rand-ay. Three…moon-ay.” Her fingers shot up with each new number.

I tried to repeat: “Ow…Own-day-“

“No, no…own-AY. Own-ay.”

“Own-ay.”

“Yes! Yes! Now: two…rand-ay.”

We went on like this for ten more minutes until I had mastered the numbers 1 through 10 to Jesni’s satisfaction. “Now, what are they?” she asked, stiffening her nostrils and arching her eyebrows.

“Own-ay…ran-day…moon-ay…uh…nahl-ay…anch-ay…uh…a-ray…eh-lay…ate-ay…om-paw-tay…uh…and…pa-tay.”

“Very good, sir! Malayalam is easy. So easy.”

I thought maybe if I had the good fortune to have Jesni as my teacher, indeed I would find Malayalam easy.

Oh Visa, My Visa!

When we were traveling to the northern province of Sikkim, Jenna and I met an amiable German couple named Joe and Bea. Over the course of a few days traveling together, Joe and Bea told us stories of their travels in Asia. Beaches in Thailand. Jungles in Cambodia. Island-hopping in Malaysia. Hiking in China. They told us all the fun parts but they also told us some harrowing tales, too.

Like the time they happened to visit Indonesia in 2003 just as America invaded Iraq. As they sat in a café in Jakarta, a group of angry Muslim protestors spotted them through the window, assumed they were American, marched up to the sidewalk in front of them and burned an American flag.

Or the time they got stranded in southwestern China and had to barter their way through a series of bus rides and taxi trips through the desolate and polluted ruggedness of the countryside to get back to Guangzhou.

Still, Joe and Bea remarked one night in Gangtok, as the four of us sat over a dinner of Tibetan beef and Sikkimese beer, that India was the hardest place in which they had ever traveled.

“Really?” I asked incredulously. “Why do you say that?”

Bea responded with an arched eyebrow: “Everything here is so overwhelming. People coming up to you, talking to you, asking you questions. You are always the center of attention. And, then, the paperwork…”

I shook my head at the time. I still could not believe India was more challenging than facing down angry protestors in Indonesia or dickering with steely-eyed Chinese cab drivers.

Now, nearly four months later, I am beginning to think Bea had a point. Our visa fortunes have changed. What Bea derisively termed ‘paperwork’ is coming back to haunt Jenna and me.

It turns out there is a qualification for our student visas that we missed in the fine print, which was written on our visas in a microscopic amalgam of English and Hindi script and covered with the customs stamp. As holders of student visas, we are required to register with the Indian authorities within 14 days of arrival in the country. Of course, that deadline passed months ago.

The missed deadline is not such a big deal. A short bit of Internet research (the Indian immigration website looks like it was last updated circa 1998) proves that we can pay a small fine and still register our visas late. But nothing in India—especially when it involves visas or passports—is ever that easy.

The same bit of research also tells me that we need the following in order to register our visas: copies of our passports (easy), four headshots (easy still), ‘duly filled-in registration book’ (which is done when you register), proof from our ‘educational institution’ that we are taking courses (a little harder but surmounted by a letter we got from ATI before we left the US), and the coup-de-grace: ‘valid and notarized’ proof of residence while living in India.

The last requirement is the stickiest wicket. Yes, we have lived in India for nearly five months, but in different places. Where should I get proof from? Kolkata, Bangalore, Tirur? No official has answered that initial question satisfactorily. What constitutes ‘proof of residence’? The answer here is more concrete but no more satisfying. The Indian immigration website says a ‘lease agreement’ or a ‘phone bill’ or a ‘hotel C-form’, which is a legal document all hotels and guesthouses are required to fill out for all guests, regardless of the length of their stay. (My parents had to fill a C-form out when they came to India last month.)

Well, we don’t get phone service, so we have no phone bill. We have not signed a lease agreement, so that won’t work either. We have letters from ATI in Kerala stating our address and our living arrangements while we teach in Tirur, but does this constitute a ‘lease agreement’? Probably not. We might possibly be able to get our hands on a hotel C-form from when we stayed in Kolkata but that was almost a half-year ago. Would that still count as our ‘proof of residence’?

To sort these questions out and in hopes of talking to a human instead of an automated response system or a mass-generated email directing my queries to other offices, I went to the local superintendent of police in Malappuram District, of which Tirur is a part. The Indian immigration website told me these police offices may also serve as registration points. I hoped this was correct.

The official with the Malappuram District police took one look at my visa and said, “You must got to Kolkata.”

“Kolkata?” I said. “But that is very far away.”

“Yes, it is.”

“It would not be easy to get there. It would take a few days by train.”

“Yes, it would.”

“And to buy plane tickets on such short notice. Very expensive.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Why can I not register here? The Indian immigration website—

“Because your visa says Kolkata on it,” and he held it up so I could see and he pointed to what I already knew was there: the words ‘American TESOL Institute-Kolkata’ written in the space reserved for the name of the ‘educational organization’ sponsoring my trip. Some official at the Indian consulate in Chicago had written those words in black ink more than six months ago, and now they were deciding my fate.

“Kolkata is very far, though,” I repeated lamely.

“Yes, it is.”

My eyes wandered to the walls of the office—chipped plaster and dirt stains, piles of dusty ledgers mildewing before my eyes, the omnipresent image of Gandhi, sewing at a spinning wheel. My eyes drifted further along the wall to a corner of the room where there hung a print of a painting of a peaceful mountain pass, complete with a rippling brook and snow-capped peaks. It was the type of ersatz artwork that has made Thomas Kincaid a millionaire. In fact, this image may have been a Thomas Kincaid piece. The picture had a message printed in bright red at the bottom of the image: “God speaks in many different ways.”

If I had been an observer to the scene, I would have chuckled at the irony, the sheer Dickensian pathos of the moment. The symbolism of that painting was too obvious to be an effective literary device. But since I was being told in reality that I would have to travel more than 3,000 miles to get one piece of paper signed because one word written on my visa more than six months ago decreed that it be so, the painting made me search frantically for God’s message in this experience.

“You are absolutely sure I cannot register here?” I asked one more time.

“You must go to Kolkata,” the official said, handing me back my visa. He smiled, then, the smile of bureaucrat who has just gotten out of some work.

“But that is far away.”

“Yes, it is.”

As I walked out of office at the Malappuram District police station, Bea’s words came suddenly back to me. The woman who had stared down angry Indonesian protestors had been right.

A week later, Jenna and I booked a flight to Kolkata. We will leave Tirur one week earlier than expected on February 20. We are not certain at the moment what will be the resolution to our visa situation—whether we will be able to register late, whether the immigration authorities will tell us to leave India, whether nothing of any consequence will happen. It has now turned into an unsatisfying waiting game.

But just like all our other experiences so far, it will be a story to tell others at sometime in the future.

Elephant Gone Wild

This elephant was calm as it passed us. But can't say that about all the elephants that day.

Halfway to the nercha, Rafi got a call on his mobile phone. As he was talking to the caller, he waved me and the rest of our small group over to the dusty curb of the narrow asphalt road on which we were walking—me, Rafi’s younger brother Salwar, and their friends Anshawd and Shafik.

He said a few things in Malayalam and then hung up and looked at the group.

“Angry elephant. We must wait here,” he said. The others nodded matter-of-factly, but I held up my hand.

“Angry elephant? Uh, how angry?” I asked.

“No big deal. Just showing anger. Emotion. We wait until it is calm,” Rafi said.

“Yes, elephants are dangerous,” Salwar added. “And big.”

“Very dangerous,” Anshawd chimed in helpfully. The boys had an odd mixture of stoicism and apprehension.

“Not to worry. Over soon,” Rafi said conclusively.

So we waited as other pedestrians—groups of adolescent boys, families, couples—walked past us in the direction we had been headed before we heard of the angry elephant. Apparently, the other nercha-goers had not gotten the news.

It is common practice in Kerala for elephants to be used in parades during street festivals (or nerchas). In my time living in Tirur, I have seen elephant processions a half-dozen times or so. And every once in a while, I read an ‘elephant-gone-wild’ story in The Hindu, the local English-language newspaper. An elephant trampling his kumki—or handler—in Kottayam. An elephant charging a group of Hindu pilgrims in Palakkad. An elephant ripping away from its chains and running into the jungle in Periyar.

Not that I could blame them. Every time I had seen a ponderous procession of elephants in Tirur, I was struck by equally potent senses of wonder and empathy. For the lumbering beasts were extraordinary up-close, majestic and almost human-seeming in their slow gait and trembling head bobs. Yet, the rattle of the chains that enclosed their thick ankles and the apathetic blankness of their eyes made their denuded power achingly obvious. These animals were a Keralan symbol—as well-known around India as kathakali and the houseboats. But they had unwillingly sacrificed their natural ambitions for this notoriety, and a viewer could see that clearly expressed in any local festival.

A coffee-table book I perused in Fort Cochin about the plight of captured elephants used to serve as parade vehicles and temple workers summed it up succintly in its title: Gods in Chains.

It was possibly its powerlessness—its pain at a life lost—that made this particular elephant go mad on this night in Tirur.

“Does this happen much?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” Shafik said. “Sometimes elephants get no food during festivals. They walk all day. They get tired. Anger: natural.” Shafik was showing a presence of mind towards the elephant rare for the Indians I had met.

“I would get angry, too,” I said, but only Anshawd seemed to understand for he broke out in peals of high-pitched laughter.

Rafi received another call about five minutes after we had stopped. He nodded into his phone and hung up.

“It is okay. Let’s go.”

We continued walking and quickly fell into the variegated streams of people walking towards the heart of the nercha, where there were a few carnival rides and food stalls. In the distance, the circular outline of the Ferris wheel loomed over the palm trees, now silhouetted in the growing dusk.

As we got closer to the Ferris wheel, the crowds increased and I noticed many people milling around in the middle of the road, or lined up along the curbs all staring in the same direction.

“Elephant here,” Rafi said, pointing to a vaguely defined shadow in a stand of palm trees on the opposite side of the road.

“Still?” I asked. “I thought you said it was okay?”

Police officers and young men with plastic festival badges strung around their necks formed a protective circle around the palm tree grove, creating a circle of clear space maybe thirty feet in diameter. They waved their arms and the police disinteresedly brandished their lathi sticks.

“Go! Go! No stop! Move! No stop!”

We shuffled past the guardians and were able to make out the silhouette of a large male elephant, his ivory tusks gleaming in the moonlight, huffing on the side of the road. He swayed from side to side and he stared fixedly away from the road towards an empty rice paddy.

“That’s it?” I asked, stopping momentarily.

Salwar—Rafi’s younger brother—pushed me gently from behind. “We must move. There is danger.”

The stewing elephant—his intake of breath audible even over the hubbub of the crowd—and the nervous energy of the onlookers reminded me of the times when fights had broken out between students in the hallways of Hogg Middle School. The students who were fighting would get broken up either by teachers or friends and then, still wild with adrenaline and anger, would spend a few harrowing seconds pacing in a small square or staring at a nearby wall before they calmed down enough to be taken to the office. That is what the elephant reminded me of, and the onlookers were just like the passive students who watched the fight—too anxious to get involved but too entranced to stop from watching.

Luckily, the guys I was with had no need to pay witness. They walked on calmly not looking back and I dutifully followed. With the angry elephant behind us, we set our sights on more benevolent pursuits—eating fried food and daring each other to get on the Ferris wheel.

Festival!

A jalebi vendor at the Kallingal's Nercha. Jalebi are little swirls of wheat flour deep-fried and doused in molasses. They are like handheld funnel-cakes covered in maple syrup. Not for the faint of the heart.





I woke up this morning feeling like I had a hangover. My head was throbbing, my throat dry, and my eyes felt weighed down by sandbags. Yet, I had not touched a drink the previous night. I had, however, been to the Kallingal's Nercha, a local street festival hosted along a narrow avenue one block from our apartment. And Jenna and I had been forced to stay up through the racket of celebretory drums and fireworks that went until three in the morning.




Held over the previous two days and nights, the Nercha commemorated the earthly deeds of a Sufi saint known in Tirur as Quni Shaheed, who is buried about one mile from where we live. Though it has a religious motivation, the fesitival is a chance for people to debauch themselves as much as their strict Muslim upbringins will allow them. That means eating fried food and sweets, staying up late, smoking cigarettes, dancing and yelling in the street, wasting money on cheap toys and jewelry, and (if the smells wafting from the groups of perambulating men is any indication) taking surreptitious pulls of liquor.




Suffice to say, the Nercha is a big deal for people who live around here. Our students asked us constantly in the week leading up to the festival whether we were going. And our neighbors warned us about the noise that would keep us up until the early hours of the morning.





Bands roved around the neighborhood, stopping at random houses to play Malayalam songs. The bands' membership usually consisted of a few trumpets, a handful of drummers, and three or four clarinets. The instruments' combined effects were about as subtle as a ballpeen hammer crashing down on your temple. Parades of elephants were also a common sight and the avoidance of their giant feces a constant worry when walking around the festival.






One of many stands that lined the street during the Nercha. Jenna and I did not have any need for toy cars or plastic baby dolls. But many other people did.









A group of young men who walked around serenading anyone who would listen with a racket of drums and cymbals. They were very enthusiastic about their task.




A few guys I went to the Nercha with on Thursday night (the final night of the festival). From left: Ashid, me, Rafi, Anshawd.

The Nercha also had a carnival with a Ferris Wheel that turned so fast that the force of inertia was the only thing keeping passangers inside.

Of Love Marriages and Dowries

Jaime and Jenna with 'clean banana leaves' at the wedding Sunday. This was the remnants of the traditional sadya meal.

In a serious moment the other night, Shaheed asked me what dowry I received when I had married Jenna.

Shaheed is one of the young men who operates the Internet café on our street, along with Mustapha and Nahas—a trio of boyhood friends who have gone into business together. They are all Tirur natives in their early 20s and devout Muslims who attended the same school from a young age.

Each night Jenna and I come to the café, they pepper us with questions about life in America in their broken English.

“Lots of money in America, nain?”

“You like the dancing and singing of America?”

“Your houses in America: they are big?”

“Americans watch Bollywood movies?”

One of their favorite topics to prod us about is our marriage. They still find it hard to believe that Jenna and I have, what they call, a ‘love marriage’.

“What is that like: love marriage?”

“How you two find love?”

“Your parents no arranging marriage? It was love?”

A ‘love marriage’ to these young men seems—at least in the way they walk about it—like a grail, an impossibility, a mesmeric talisman from another universe.

Though giving a percentage is mere guesswork, it is easy to say that most marriages in Tirur whether they be Hindu, Muslim or Christian, are arranged marriages. The two marriages we attended Sunday were arranged. The co-workers we have spoken to at JM who have confided in us details about their marriages have all been betrothed at the strict behest of their parents. Nahas himself is in the process of having his marriage arranged by his father.

“We are searching all around Malappuram District,” he said one day at the Internet café.

“For who?” I asked.

“Different families. Different girls.”

“So you do not know the girl yet? You have not met her?”

“No. It is not confirmed yet.”

Though it is not ‘confirmed’, apparently the wedding is on for December. For several weeks now, Nahas has been pleading with Jenna and I to return to India for his wedding (his ‘marriage function’ as he calls it).

“Money is no problem, Kyle,” he says. “This is friendship. My friendship. I want you there at my marriage function,” goes a typical lament. “You must come. Money no object.”

“But Nahas…” I say, and launch into a very unsatisfactory explanation about the price of plane tickets that involves me stammering out the phrase, “…thousands and thousands of dollar.”

This time of year is a particularly auspicious time to get married. It is the dry season, so rain does not usually threaten the lavish outdoor celebrations Indians have for their weddings. It is also a festival season, when Hindus and Muslims and Christians all celebrate their version of a ‘new year’ with all the attendant themes of rebirth and spiritual awakening.

Nahas says even though six months of every year is taken up by the monsoon (when hardly any weddings are conducted) he will still attend nearly 100 marriages in a given year.

“Every Sunday for months,” he told me the other day, as he, Mustapha, Shaheed and I chatted outside the Internet café. “Sometimes, three or four in one Sunday.”

The conversation inevitably drifted to the topic of ‘love marriage’.

“How long you and Jenna together before marriage?” Shaheed asked. I told them about two years. They nodded thoughtfully.

“This is long time,” Nahas finally said. I was not surprised. Engagements and marriages seemed to pop up unexpectedly around Tirur like dandelions. The other day, a co-worker at our school offhandedly invited us to her wedding of which we had never heard mention until she said, “Good news: I am getting married next week. You should come.”

I asked the guys why nobody in Tirur ever had a ‘love marriage.’ They glanced around at each other for a few seconds, possibly gauging an appropriate response or formulating what little English they knew into an answer that would to justice to this deep topic.

Mustapha finally spoke up: “Love marriage is not accepted by parents. They not support love marriage. A love marriage going against the parents, against the family. Only arranged marriages are supported.”

“So, you trust your parents to arrange a good marriage?”

The men all nodded.

“Are people in arranged marriages happy?”

Again, the boys unflinchingly nodded their assent.

Then, Shaheed asked me about my dowry.

“You get dowry in marriage with Jenna?”

The question came up so unexpectedly and was so at odds with anything I had ever considered about my marriage that I laughed.

“No, only her,” I said.

“That is love marriage, nain?” Shaheed said with his eyebrows raised. I nodded.

“People get dowries here in Tirur when they marry?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” Shaheed said. “Our friend—very rich marriage—getting 8 lakh rupees (the equivalent of about $18,000) and one kilogram of gold.”

“Is 8 lakh common amount?”

“No, that amount very high. Another friend, he getting 2 lakh rupees (about $4,500). That is common.”

“The bride’s family always pays this?”

“Oh yes, every time. Every marriage. And the cost of the marriage function. Usually Rs. 10,000 itself.”

“The bride’s family pays all of it?” I asked. Shaheed nodded.

“So, you get no dowry?” he asked, his tone suggesting he still did no believe it. “No money? No gold? No bracelets or jewelry?”

His words conjured to my mind a bartered deal in some medieval marketplace or a bedouin tent.

“We gave each other rings. And our parents paid for the marriage together. But no money. No jewelry. No gold,” I said.

I thought my answers would disappoint them, but they retained a naïve curiosity about the whole matter. They seemed intrigued by my strange arrangement with Jenna. For we had been married only for love with no economic considerations—a truly odd concept in this part of the world.

Weddings: Two For One

Internet connection was slow tonight, so this post will be the first part of a series that will return hopefully tomorrow. Enjoy the pictures from our first Indian wedding!

For months, Jenna and I have been hoping to get the opportunity to go to an Indian wedding. On Sunday, we attended two: a Hindu wedding for Shami, co-worker of our roommate Jaime, and a Muslim wedding for Ali Akbar, the grandson of my barber.



We went to the Hindu wedding first and got there on a school bus provided by Jaime's school for about a dozen faculty members. It was held at the bride's family's home just outside Tirur. By my estimate, at least 500 people were in attendance. The couple placed garlands of white jasmine flowers around each other's necks and walked around the kalyana mandapam--a raised platform with a gabled roof that serves as an altar--four times. Here they sit in repose just after the ceremony, waiting for pictures to start.










Credit Jenna with this shot. She used her sharp elbows to get to the front of a jostling pack of spectators, who surrounded the kalyana mandapam like papparazzi. The wedding contained a number of ritual offerings and exchanges, most of which were lost on me. The groom did give the bride a gold pendant to hang around her neck and she gave him a gold ring. Finally, the groom placed a swatch of red paste on the bride's forehead at the hairline where her hair is parted, a Hindu symbol that she is now married.







A picture of the crowd that had descended on this quiet home for the day. Plastic chairs were arrayed in meandering lines all facing the altar, but when the bride came out of the house,most everyone stood.








The meal after the ceremony was a traditional Keralan sadya, a meal served on a banana leaf and eaten with the hands. They held the meal across the street at a neighbor's house, under a makeshift canopy of thatched plam fronds and coir fiber. More than a dozen long tables accomodated the large number of guests. An efficient troop of servers stalked around the tables, doling out steaming piles of rice and spicy sambar and cups of sweet payasaim.

No Pain, No Gain

This picture has nothing to do with this post. It is just a cool image. This man climbed a palm tree in the yard in front of our apartment with nothing more than his bare feet and hands. Twenty-five feet off the ground, he chopped down a few coconuts and then hopped back down and left.

For the past few days, Jenna has complained of a canker sore inside her bottom lip. She does not hesitate to show me the ulcer by pulling her lip down to her chin, pleading with me to judge the sore’s size and apparent redness. I can report from these many viewings that by Tuesday night, it was not getting any better.

So, I took a chance and walked to a nearby pharmacy just around the corner from our apartment on Tirur’s main road. It is a one-room stall with a walk-up counter. In many respects, it looks like an American pharmacy: white walls, dull green tables and chairs, a quilting of shelves along the back wall overflowing with pill bottles and ointment tubes.

A serene-looking man with glasses sat behind a desk talking in a low voice to a customer who stood on the outside of the stall leaning in over the counter. At a computer, another pharmacist was filling out an order. He had a silvery skein of pills—the likes of which you pull out of a box of Sudafed or Immodium in America—and he was cutting individual pills off with scissors and putting these separated pills into a small brown paper bag. Not exactly the procedure you would see in the US, but I had long ago stopped cataloging differences between an ‘American way’ and an ‘Indian way’.

The customer in front of me left with a small brown paper bag of his own, and I stepped forward. I pulled my lip down to my chin (just as I had seen Jenna demonstrate several dozen times over the previous few days) and I pointed animatedly at the exposed pink underside.

“Do you have something for canker sores?” I asked, though it came out something like, “Do yoo haf sumfing fer cankuh sorsh?”

Maybe my malformed words hit closer to Malayalam than my full-throated English because the man nodded passively, got up from his desk and walked to the wall of shelves. He picked over a few bags and boxes like a monk looking for an ancient text in a sacristy then he came back with several silvery packets of individually wrapped capsules. It looked as if he had just ripped a few from a box.

“One daily,” he said, putting the pills in a small brown paper bag. It’s not a good sign when the pharmacy makes you feel like your visiting a speakeasy.

“How much?” I asked, my lip no longer pulled down to my chin.

“Ten rupees,” he said. Ten rupees! A quarter in America!

I gladly and eagerly handed over a ten-rupee note. The man smiled and moved his benevolent gaze on the next customer in line.

I had just either solved Jenna’s canker sore problem or bought illegal drugs. Either way, I hadn’t been ripped off.

Elephants On Parade

Word about the nerscha—or ‘festival’—started off as a rumor, pieced together through scraps of broken English and a picture in the local newspaper.

As Jenna and I were headed towards the market Sunday, we passed the barbershop where I have gotten my haircut a few times. My barber—sitting idly in a chair usually reserved for customers—waved us over. The man speaks very little English and typically resorts to grunting and smiling when he converses with me.

He smiled this time and picked up a crumpled newspaper. The paper was in Malayalam, so I had no hope of reading it, but a giant picture dominated the front page. It showed a large crowd packed shoulder to shoulder on a sun-dappled field, looking towards a line of several elephants that were wearing colorful, bejeweled headpieces.

“Tooo-day!” the barber announced, emphatically tapping the picture with his finger. “Fest-vull! Tooo-day!”

“This? A festival? In Tirur?” I asked. The barber nodded, smiled, and grunted. He pointed at the picture again.

“Fest-vull. Go. You…go! Cam-RAH!” me mimed the action of taking a picture with an invisible camera.

A man sitting in a plastic chair behind the barber looked up and said, “Two terty.”

“Two-thirty?” I asked.

“Yes. Two terty.”

The barber smiled and tapped the picture again. “Fest-vull. Too-day. You go. Cam-RAH!”

Jenna and I bought groceries and came back home, but I could not get the barber’s command out of my head: “You go! Cam-RAH!” So, with the camera slung over my shoulder, I set out for the center of town.

I heard it before I saw it. Near the train station, the percussive cacophony of drums and cymbals reverberated loudly. I stalked through a back alley and crossed the train tracks and came up on a small grassy knoll overlooking the street the runs in front of the train station.

I saw a seen of ecstatic chaos, the likes of which you might see on a PBS documentary about India hosted by some effete British journalist. (“And here, we have the astonishing spectacle of an Indian festival! Quite fantastic, isn’t it?”)

People thronged in the streets, shoulder to shoulder, as they had been in that newspaper photo. Other onlookers crowded along the curbs and stood atop idled jeeps and trucks and hung from balconies and grasped tree branches for a better look. Somberly overlooking the whole procession was a troop of elephants.

The elephants slowly made their way through the crowd, gently nuzzling past pedestrians and spectators. Each elephant had a team of four men on its back. The beastst legs were shackled in heavy chains and clanked with each step. Another man stood out front of the elephant with another chain guiding the elephant through the parade like a horse on a bit. The elephants each wore ornate headpieces made of shimmering silk and twinkling sequins.

I reached the parade just as it was taking off. A phalanx of musicians led the march, banging drums and clashing cymbals in rough unison. The elephants and their handlers came next. And a division of smartly dressed police officers in khaki uniforms all carrying lathi sticks brought up the rear.

I stepped into the street with dozens of other onlookers and followed the procession as it grindingly made its way down Tirur’s main drag. The crowd became denser as we got further from the parade’s origin. People must have been lining up for hours. The curbs and street stalls were blanketed with staring faces.

A man fell in beside me, “You like?” he said, pointing forward to where we had a good view of three waving elephant asses.

“Uhhh…yeah. Nice,” I said.

“Good, nain?”

“Yeah, impressive.”

He clapped me on the back and walked on, determined to get closer to the elephants.

The parade ebbed and flowed with the size of the crowd. At more tightly packed junctions, the march stopped and the drumming would increase and the elephant riders would wave more vigorously. One went as far as to stand up on his elephant and stretch his arms out high like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.

I eventually worked my way up to the back elephants’ flanks. I heard the beasts grunting and breathing, shooting their hot breath piston-like out of their nostrils. They clomped along the asphalt, an odd anachronism amidst Tirur’s shops and businesses.

I found another small hillock away from the road that was less populated by spectators. A man nearby was shooing some boys away from a crumbling brick wall on which they were trying to perch themselves. He noticed me taking pictures and walked over to me.

“Good shots?” he said, glancing at my camera, a clear indication he wanted me to show him some of my images. I obliged.

He nodded, smiled and sighed. “Very good.”

“Where is this going?” I asked, pointing towards the parade, which had passed us and was headed further along the road that headed out of Tirur.

The man said a name of a nearby district. “Three kilometers,” he said.

“Are people watching the whole way?”

“Of course. People will follow.”

I decided I would not be one of them. I had already walked from one side of Tirur to the other and my sandaled feet were getting sore. After all, if you’ve seen one elephant parade you’ve seen ‘em all.

God's Own Country

I wanted to begin this post with a few 'thank-you's. Upon our arrival back in Kerala after the New Year's trip to Delhi and Agra, Jenna and I found packages shipped from Jenna's mother Barb and our dear family friend Barb Reedstrom. Both packages contained Christmas cookies that did not quite arrive in Tirur before we left for vacation. We have already consumed them all.

In addition, we have gotten packages from my parents and my Uncle Kent, Aunt Antha and their daughter Leah--with contents ranging from back issues of The New Yorker to popcorn packets to beef jerky. (And, of course, toilet paper). We feel so blessed to have such thoughtful family and friends looking out for us from thousands of miles away. It needed to be mentioned.

Keralites call their state "God's Own Country". (I know my friend Matt Wilson, a native of the state of Georgia, won't like to hear that.) One day during vacation, though, we plainly saw why. This picture begins to do the phrase justice--serenity defined.

My parents, Jenna and I drove around rural Kerala the second day of my parents' trip. We were attended by Valsan, a friend of a friend from back in the States. Valsan lived in a small town outside Kochi and was in the process of setting up a bed-and-breakfast and his family home. To make ends meet in the interim, he worked as our guide for a couple of days.

He first took us to an elephant training center, which was both interesting and somewhat heart-rending. The elephants were being trained to work in the state's rubber plantations and to also be ceremonial animals at Hindu temples. Though Valsan insisted they were treated well, we couldn't help but feel a tinge of guilt looking at the elephants' thick legs manacled to chains staked into the ground.

Mom sipping coconut water at the elephant training ground. You can buy this stuff pretty much everywhere in southern India for Rs. 4 or less per coconut. Jenna is a fan; I'm not. Maybe it owes to our first experience drinking coconut water in Bangalore. I got one that, I think, had already fermented. Normally, they are semi-sweet drinks consumed with abandon on the streets here. You will find the empty shells of coconuts tacked chest-high in some alleyways.

The mother elephant at the elephant training ground. She normally gave rides for Rs. 200 but she wasn't feeling well. She was noticeably listless,her eyes drowsily fluttering and her ears drooping. It added to our feelings of guilt.

This picture does not look that interesting, but it becomes a bit moreso when you realize this is raw rubber taken directly from rubber trees. We stopped at a small rubber plantation and saw how the process works. The workers tap the tree's bark and let the rubber--which looks like Elmer's glue--drip out of the tree. Then, they add water and let the rubber coalesce into these molds.

And here is the rubber sap coming out of the tree. A small plastic dish tied to the tree catches the goo. The workers said it takes sap from 10 trees to make one mold (like the ones in the previous picture).

Later, we ended up at Arithrapally Falls--the "Niagara of India". I don't know if it's quite that, but it was still impressive.

We did a lot of driving that day, so Jenna felt the need to stretch.

We're On a Boat!

The day after Christmas, my parents, Jenna and I rented a houseboat for an evening. This is one of Kerala's most popular tourist attractions. In the southern canal city of Allepey, hundreds of houseboats shove off every day during the high season. The snaky backwaters of Kerala are filled with these cruising hulks, fashioned out of wood and wicker to look like traditional Keralan fishing trawlers. Some can get quite massive with bedrooms to fit more than 10 people--essentially, floating hotels. Our houseboat was more modest with two bedrooms, a kitchen, dining area, and patio. Though it has brought a lot of tourism to the area, the houseboats are necessarily controverisal for their impact on the ecology. We had to dock by 5:30 pm, so that local fishermen could cast their nets for the night.

We were served three meals, including a traditional Keralan thali--a meal spread out over a banana leaf. This is us sitting down for dinner. You can see other houseboats floating in the background.

And here is our meal: fried fish (complete with head and eyes), rice with a rich spicy broth called sambar poured over the top, the flaky fried pappadam like a hardened tortilla, and two kinds of chutneys to mix into the rice. Traditionally, Keralans eat this with their hands, as they do all their meals. Jenna and I followed this tradition; my parents wimped out and used silverware.

My parents enjoying the view from the patio, which was situated on the boat's upper deck above the steering wheel.

And me, enjoying a nap. The houseboat experience is designed to be a relaxing one. A crew of three saw to our every need (including making tea for my dad about five different times).






A typical backwater view--palm fronds and rice paddies. They are called the backwaters because they literally are that: the 'backwash' of the Arabian Sea which washes in through the marshy canals along Kerala's coast and mixes its salty contents in with the natural freshwater of the area.

Sunset in the backwaters. We docked for the night by a fishing village, passers-by curiously peeking in to our dining room as we relaxed, chatted, and sipped some Kingfisher beer. The noises of drumming and chanting from a nearby Hindu temple accompanied us off the bed.