One’s foreignness in India has the advantage sometimes of instantaneously bridging divides. Take my experience during a bus trip the other day, traveling between Valancherry and Tirur—a journey of about 45 minutes.
I had taken a window seat at the Valancherry bus stand several minutes before the bus left and moments before the entire carriage filled with passengers. Following known Western protocol on public transportation, I promptly buried my face in a magazine, shutting out the other riders. I caught a few curious glances over my shoulder from the man sitting next to me, a middle-aged Muslim with a knitted skullcap who was methodically running a string of prayer beads through his fingers.
Other passengers, I noticed, gave me smiles and short nods whenever I looked up from my reading. I nodded back as politely as possible.
Midway through the journey, the bus stopped at a rather nondescript intersection to let a few women off and allow a few more on the bus. As we waited, I looked up once again and peered out my window, which was open and letting in a refreshing breeze that broke up the staleness of the bus interior.
Across the road, a family of young girls and small children trudged along the curb, picking up trash. The girls—who had the bearings of overworked mothers—looked to be no more than 18. The small kids I took to be their children numbered five—two boys and three girls, one of whom was a toddler tightly grasping the hand of one of the mothers. The other mother carried a wailing baby who had on no clothes save a ragged, stained T-shirt. One of the boys, with an ineffable grin, lit a scrap of paper afire with a match. He showed off the burning paper to the girls and one of the mothers noticed. I thought the boy would get in the rear, but the mother grinned and made the other mother take notice. She also chuckled and continued walking with the crying baby on her hip.
I noticed all this, of course, in a mater of seconds. As the family passed by the bus, the boy who was burning paper (which was now a flimsy charred mess of wilted black ash in his hands) noticed me on the bus. He stopped dead in his tracks. He tapped one of the young girls and pointed at me, smiling slightly as he did so. The girl stopped to, struck motionless with an odd mix of what looked like wonderment and anxiety.
The boy raised his hand slightly, working up courage to interact with me. The other kids had by now all noticed and were stopped, huddled around each other, whispering to each other and glancing tentatively my way.
His nerve steeled, apparently, the boy began shouting: “What your name? What your name? What your name?” The phrase had a clipped, strident cadence. The mothers noticed and stopped, looked up and saw me, registering my presences with the same bewildered faces.
The bus driver thrust the vehicle into gear and it began to roll forward, in the opposite direction of where the family was walking. The boy continued to shout: “What your name? What your name?”
I leaned my head out the window as the bus picked up speed. “KYLE! KY-LE!” I yelled into the wind. I am sure the boy did not pick it up clearly, yet he smiled all the same. I saw him playfully push his sister, wanting her to recognize a great accomplishment. And the family continued walking up the road.
I leaned back into the bus and was about to begin reading my magazine again, when I noticed the other passengers around me. They were all staring me and grinning gleefully. The Muslim man next to me, in particular, wore an especially benevolent smile—his prayer beads momentarily suspended in his hand. I do not think anyone on that bus spoke much English. At least, they did not use the opportunity to ask me any questions in English. They simply smiled knowingly.
From there, I put the magazine back in my bag and enjoyed their silent company for the remainder of the journey.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
A Little Off the Top
Getting your hair cut by someone who does not speak your same language can be nerve-wracking. That is why it is best to bring pictures.
That is how I found myself in a Tirur barbershop: a small, plastic-covered photo album in my lap, pointing to a picture taken last Christmas at Jenna’s mother’s house. I am surrounded by Jenna and her family—her sister Priya, her cousins Mark and Kathleen, her Auntie Lisa and Uncle Mike. In the photo, I have short hair, close-cropped along the sides with a pointy inch-long tuft rising from the top.
I point at my hair in the photo. “Like this. Short,” I say, looking imploringly at the barber. He looks from the photo to my head. Back to the photo. Back to the head. He squints. Pulls at my long hair. Molds it like clay as he looks back yet another time at the photo—like an artist judging a subject before he begins his work.
He nods an affirmative and gets out the shearers.
For the past decade or so of my life, I have said the same thing in every barbershop or hair salon I have happened to walk into: “About an inch off the top. Number two on the sides. Keep the fade.” Regardless of the cutters credentials, they have understood and made quick work of my hair.
No such simple procedure is enacted in Tirur. The barber is a genial man in his mid-fifties. He wears a stained white button-up shirt and a loose dhoti (or ankle-length loincloth), which is the style of many working-class men in Kerala. He hobbles around his small shop painfully on legs that appear crippled from some problem at birth—his hips are splayed out at an odd angle, his knees bent inwards towards each other. He must balance himself on the inner edges of his feet.
He kicks the chair I am sitting in unceremoniously and gets it to drop a few inches so he can get a better view of the top of my head. He roughly directs my head towards the angles it needs to go in order to begin shaving and pruning.
Two men—the type who strike me as regulars to this barbershop—come in off the street and sit in plastic chairs behind me. They talk to the barber animatedly, sometimes chuckling and pointing at my head. I surmise they are not here for their haircuts; they are here to watch me get mine.
With his shearers, the barber shaves it a little shorter than I would have preferred. But I cannot protest. I already feel a nice breeze fanning the back of my head. He starts in dexterously with the scissors and snips away the longer stands at the crown of my head. He cuts away the bangs with a clickety-clacking flourish. Then, he takes an old-fashioned long razor and shaves off my sideburns and cleans up the edges around the hairline. The razor makes a satisfyingly rough sound against my skin.
After it is all done—like barbers the world over—he slaps some ointment on the back of my neck and stands back with his hands upon his hips, his jaw thrust forward proudly. He gives the thumbs-up sign. I give it to him back.
I get out some rupees and he looks at them and then back at me. “Change?” he says (every business owner in Tirur knows that word).
I tell him to wait a moment and, leaving my photo album as collateral, run over to a market across the street. I buy some vegetables and a loaf of bread and come back to the barber with some smaller bills.
When I return, the barber is now alone, sitting in the chair I had just occupied, flipping through my photo album. He sees me enter and smiles, pointing at the album. He flips back the first page, obviously intending for me to fill him in on who all these people are.
The first picture is of Jenna and I two summers ago. He points to Jenna. “Wife,” I say. He repeats with a broad smile: “Wife.”
He quickly goes through a series of Jenna’s family. I say, “Wife’s sisters.” He repeats: “Sisters.”
“Wife’s mother.”
“Mother.”
“Cousins,” I say. “Cousin,” he repeats, still smiling.
He gets to pictures of my family. I point out my mother and father, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, my friends and old roommates. Each time, the barber patiently and proudly repeats the words: “Father…Mother…Grandfather…Grandmother…Uncle.”
When he has flipped through the entire album, he takes my payment and offers his hand. I shake it, in a silent reassurance that I will be back when my hair once again needs a little off the top.
That is how I found myself in a Tirur barbershop: a small, plastic-covered photo album in my lap, pointing to a picture taken last Christmas at Jenna’s mother’s house. I am surrounded by Jenna and her family—her sister Priya, her cousins Mark and Kathleen, her Auntie Lisa and Uncle Mike. In the photo, I have short hair, close-cropped along the sides with a pointy inch-long tuft rising from the top.
I point at my hair in the photo. “Like this. Short,” I say, looking imploringly at the barber. He looks from the photo to my head. Back to the photo. Back to the head. He squints. Pulls at my long hair. Molds it like clay as he looks back yet another time at the photo—like an artist judging a subject before he begins his work.
He nods an affirmative and gets out the shearers.
For the past decade or so of my life, I have said the same thing in every barbershop or hair salon I have happened to walk into: “About an inch off the top. Number two on the sides. Keep the fade.” Regardless of the cutters credentials, they have understood and made quick work of my hair.
No such simple procedure is enacted in Tirur. The barber is a genial man in his mid-fifties. He wears a stained white button-up shirt and a loose dhoti (or ankle-length loincloth), which is the style of many working-class men in Kerala. He hobbles around his small shop painfully on legs that appear crippled from some problem at birth—his hips are splayed out at an odd angle, his knees bent inwards towards each other. He must balance himself on the inner edges of his feet.
He kicks the chair I am sitting in unceremoniously and gets it to drop a few inches so he can get a better view of the top of my head. He roughly directs my head towards the angles it needs to go in order to begin shaving and pruning.
Two men—the type who strike me as regulars to this barbershop—come in off the street and sit in plastic chairs behind me. They talk to the barber animatedly, sometimes chuckling and pointing at my head. I surmise they are not here for their haircuts; they are here to watch me get mine.
With his shearers, the barber shaves it a little shorter than I would have preferred. But I cannot protest. I already feel a nice breeze fanning the back of my head. He starts in dexterously with the scissors and snips away the longer stands at the crown of my head. He cuts away the bangs with a clickety-clacking flourish. Then, he takes an old-fashioned long razor and shaves off my sideburns and cleans up the edges around the hairline. The razor makes a satisfyingly rough sound against my skin.
After it is all done—like barbers the world over—he slaps some ointment on the back of my neck and stands back with his hands upon his hips, his jaw thrust forward proudly. He gives the thumbs-up sign. I give it to him back.
I get out some rupees and he looks at them and then back at me. “Change?” he says (every business owner in Tirur knows that word).
I tell him to wait a moment and, leaving my photo album as collateral, run over to a market across the street. I buy some vegetables and a loaf of bread and come back to the barber with some smaller bills.
When I return, the barber is now alone, sitting in the chair I had just occupied, flipping through my photo album. He sees me enter and smiles, pointing at the album. He flips back the first page, obviously intending for me to fill him in on who all these people are.
The first picture is of Jenna and I two summers ago. He points to Jenna. “Wife,” I say. He repeats with a broad smile: “Wife.”
He quickly goes through a series of Jenna’s family. I say, “Wife’s sisters.” He repeats: “Sisters.”
“Wife’s mother.”
“Mother.”
“Cousins,” I say. “Cousin,” he repeats, still smiling.
He gets to pictures of my family. I point out my mother and father, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, my friends and old roommates. Each time, the barber patiently and proudly repeats the words: “Father…Mother…Grandfather…Grandmother…Uncle.”
When he has flipped through the entire album, he takes my payment and offers his hand. I shake it, in a silent reassurance that I will be back when my hair once again needs a little off the top.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Can I get that in an XXL?
India is a big country but apparently not big enough for me. I have had this affirmed repeatedly by shopping for men’s clothes across the Subcontinent, from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea.
I have been laughed out of shoe stores in Kolkata when I asked for a size 12. I have gained quizzical looks at malls in Bangalore when I requested size 42 dress shirts. And after the first few attempts, I gave up on finding pants that would accommodate one of my legs let alone both.
It happened again in Tirur. I was in need of some ‘vests’. That is: sleeveless undershirts. (What Americans call ‘vests’, the Indians—by way of the British—call ‘waistcoats’. But I was definitely not looking for waistcoats.) I only needed some vests (or undershirts) because I had accidently put one of mine in the wash with Jenna’s bright pink kameez, and it came out looking like a scoop of Ben and Jerry’s ‘Cherry Garcia’ ice cream.
I walked into a clothing store in Tirur called Pooma’s (which promised an “All-Male Experience”, whatever that was), and found eight or nine youngish men loitering around the counter waiting for a customer. They all jumped into gear when I stepped across the threshold. Yes, sir? Pants, sir? Shirts, sir? What you like, sir? Need shoes today, sir? Handkerchiefs, many handkerchiefs sir?
“I need vests,” I said simply, splaying my arms out like a basketball referee trying to break up a fight.
Vests! Vests, sir! Yes, sir, vests! This way, sir. Right this way, sir. Come, sir! Vests! Vests!
I followed a troupe of helpers to another room at the back, piled high with cardboard boxes out of which spilled cotton shirts all manner of gaudy shape, stripe, and design. Glass cases of more shirts, dress pants, and jeans every shade of blue towered from floor to ceiling behind a Formica counter.
One of the helpers pulled out various plastic wrapped packages with vests. I put my hands wide as if I was telling a fish story and said, “BIG! The biggest you have.” The man’s eyes twinkled as if he understood; he reached behind the counter once more and brought out another package, slapped it proudly and nodded as if to say, “I found you the best vest in Tirur!”
I took the package without looking any closer, dodged back through the troupe of helpers and went home. When I got back to the apartment, I quickly understood my folly. I tried on the vest the helper had so proudly handed me: it barely fit across my chest and came down hardly past my navel. Tight as a corset, it looked like a shirt Lady Gaga might wear on the red carpet.
Jenna laughed and then decided it would perfect for her to wear as a nightshirt. I checked the size: 90 cm. This meant nothing to me, considering I have lived my life in the Standard system. I checked my other vests—ones I had bought in Bangalore—and they said 110 cm. Despite the metrics, I recognized a sizeable gap when I saw one.
The next day, I went back to Pooma’s. The troupe of helpers perked up again, recognizing a repeat customer. Yes, sir? More vests, sir?
“I need bigger vests,” I did the fish-story thing again with my hands. “One-hundred and ten centimeters.”
The troupe stared at me blankly, helplessly. I repeated my request, in a louder, slower voice (which is the habit I have unwittingly gotten into in Tirur when a person does not understand me.) “One…hundred…and…ten…cent…i…meters.”
They continued to stare. And then one of them—the same one who had helped me the other day—began shaking his head sadly. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Too big. No have here.”
I walked out, resigned to my vest-less fate. A giant among Indians, I began plodding slowly home.
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Weekend in Kochi
Our trip to Kochi over this past weekend turned out to be quite a well-timed respite. Jenna commented on the first day we got there (Friday), that this was “the first time we were able to really relax in India.”
Truly, Kochi offered to us our first genuine “vacation” atmosphere since arriving in the Subcontinent more than two months ago. It is a popular spot for Western tourists, and we saw gaggles of French, German, and English sightseers throughout the weekend. In fact, at dinner on Friday night in a full restaurant in Fort Cochin, Jenna was the only Indian in the place besides the waiters. (Whether that is a good or bad thing for a place's repute is another matter.)
Colonized by the Portuguese in the 1500s, Kochi still retains visible European influences in its architecture—red-tiled roofs, stucco houses, gothic cathedrals, narrow twisting residential streets. The area is heavily Catholic, owing to the twin impacts of European traders and Christian missionaries throughout the past few centuries. The town also remains home to India’s only notable Jewish enclave, complete with a synagogue dating back to the 16th Century. (It is quite an arresting sight seeing a man of South Asian complexion walking around with a yarmulke and forelocks, as we did several times walking around the alleyways of Kochi’s Jew Town Saturday.)
Kochi itself is an agglomeration of several different municipalities—the largest and most commercial being Ernauklam, which sits on the Indian mainland. This is home to many corporate offices, business districts, and the city’s two main train junctions. In feel and atmosphere, it is little different from the other cities we have been in during our travels. Across a brief causeway, one drives to Willingdon Island—another municipality—home to some upscale waterfront homes and a giant naval base. Hopping along another causeway, you reach further out into the Arabian Sea and come to Forth Cochin (on its own island), the historical and cultural heart of the Kochi district and the place Jenna and I stayed during our weekend. This place again charms visitors with its quaint European atmosphere and, above all, its superb and utterly remarkable quietness. Save the occasional sound of a revving auto-rickshaw, all Jenna and I heard over two days were the cawing of ravens and the brief patter of a intermittent rain showers.
Our guesthouse is the same place we will be staying at again in December when my parents visit. In fact, Jenna and I considered this weekend a kind of fact-finding mission. What we found, left us excited to come back. The guesthouse—a place called Ann’s Residency—is a mere five-minute walk from the famous Fort Cochin shoreline, dotted as it is with fish stalls, Chinese fishing nets, and banked wooden fishing boats. Ann’s Residency sits within the stucco, whitewashed walls of a quaint villa, and the rooms (on two levels) surround a quiet cobble-stoned courtyard complete with a miniature garden of palm trees and a fish tank. The rooms have AC and small cable TVs, mosquito nets around the beds, and rather graphic woodcarvings of the kama sutra on the walls.
Jenna and I surmised that all of these elements—the mosquito net, the kama sutra—were intentionally combined to give visiting Westerners an exotic feel for India. Yet, we jokingly concluded at the end of our weekend that Kochi was “India for beginners”. Or, more pointedly, “India for White People”.
This is not a bad thing. Having spent several weeks now exposed to all the raw life and abundance that India has to offer, it was frankly good (and necessary) for us to get away. Kochi provided that opportunity in spades. Yet, if you come to Kochi on vacation and go nowhere else in India, and it is impossible for you to go home and tell people you have ‘seen India’. It reminds me of my conceit in high school, telling people I had been to California when, in fact, I had only stopped briefly in LAX on my way to Hawaii.
Visiting Kochi and enjoying its tropical quietude is about as close to entering the heart of India as eating at the LAX food court is to seeing the Redwood Forest or the Golden Gate Bridge. Yet, Kochi is indelibly a part of India. A part, in fact, that is talked about surprisingly little in travel literature. Its uniqueness—the vary fact that you do not feel a part of India when you are there—is what makes it and the rest of this country so special.
India is a rather unpredictable country. The Jews of Kochi would agree.
Truly, Kochi offered to us our first genuine “vacation” atmosphere since arriving in the Subcontinent more than two months ago. It is a popular spot for Western tourists, and we saw gaggles of French, German, and English sightseers throughout the weekend. In fact, at dinner on Friday night in a full restaurant in Fort Cochin, Jenna was the only Indian in the place besides the waiters. (Whether that is a good or bad thing for a place's repute is another matter.)
Colonized by the Portuguese in the 1500s, Kochi still retains visible European influences in its architecture—red-tiled roofs, stucco houses, gothic cathedrals, narrow twisting residential streets. The area is heavily Catholic, owing to the twin impacts of European traders and Christian missionaries throughout the past few centuries. The town also remains home to India’s only notable Jewish enclave, complete with a synagogue dating back to the 16th Century. (It is quite an arresting sight seeing a man of South Asian complexion walking around with a yarmulke and forelocks, as we did several times walking around the alleyways of Kochi’s Jew Town Saturday.)
Kochi itself is an agglomeration of several different municipalities—the largest and most commercial being Ernauklam, which sits on the Indian mainland. This is home to many corporate offices, business districts, and the city’s two main train junctions. In feel and atmosphere, it is little different from the other cities we have been in during our travels. Across a brief causeway, one drives to Willingdon Island—another municipality—home to some upscale waterfront homes and a giant naval base. Hopping along another causeway, you reach further out into the Arabian Sea and come to Forth Cochin (on its own island), the historical and cultural heart of the Kochi district and the place Jenna and I stayed during our weekend. This place again charms visitors with its quaint European atmosphere and, above all, its superb and utterly remarkable quietness. Save the occasional sound of a revving auto-rickshaw, all Jenna and I heard over two days were the cawing of ravens and the brief patter of a intermittent rain showers.
Our guesthouse is the same place we will be staying at again in December when my parents visit. In fact, Jenna and I considered this weekend a kind of fact-finding mission. What we found, left us excited to come back. The guesthouse—a place called Ann’s Residency—is a mere five-minute walk from the famous Fort Cochin shoreline, dotted as it is with fish stalls, Chinese fishing nets, and banked wooden fishing boats. Ann’s Residency sits within the stucco, whitewashed walls of a quaint villa, and the rooms (on two levels) surround a quiet cobble-stoned courtyard complete with a miniature garden of palm trees and a fish tank. The rooms have AC and small cable TVs, mosquito nets around the beds, and rather graphic woodcarvings of the kama sutra on the walls.
Jenna and I surmised that all of these elements—the mosquito net, the kama sutra—were intentionally combined to give visiting Westerners an exotic feel for India. Yet, we jokingly concluded at the end of our weekend that Kochi was “India for beginners”. Or, more pointedly, “India for White People”.
This is not a bad thing. Having spent several weeks now exposed to all the raw life and abundance that India has to offer, it was frankly good (and necessary) for us to get away. Kochi provided that opportunity in spades. Yet, if you come to Kochi on vacation and go nowhere else in India, and it is impossible for you to go home and tell people you have ‘seen India’. It reminds me of my conceit in high school, telling people I had been to California when, in fact, I had only stopped briefly in LAX on my way to Hawaii.
Visiting Kochi and enjoying its tropical quietude is about as close to entering the heart of India as eating at the LAX food court is to seeing the Redwood Forest or the Golden Gate Bridge. Yet, Kochi is indelibly a part of India. A part, in fact, that is talked about surprisingly little in travel literature. Its uniqueness—the vary fact that you do not feel a part of India when you are there—is what makes it and the rest of this country so special.
India is a rather unpredictable country. The Jews of Kochi would agree.
Friday, November 5, 2010
My First Foreign Friend
Picture: A view of our train car on the way to Kochi. Vinu--my 'new foreign friend'--can be seen in the foreground on the left.
Jenna and I jogged down the train platform, hurriedly looking for our car number. We had one chance to get out of Tirur for this three-day weekend. We desperately did not want to miss it.
We dodged through milling crowds of waiting people and juked past other commuters disembarking from the Allepey Express which had just pulled into the Tirur station and would start up again any second, chugging south towards Kochi.
Then, just as the train whistle blasted to warn passengers of its imminent departure, I spotted what we were looking for: D1. The number of our car. We reached the car and hopped on board as the whistle blasted a second time. A few seconds later, the train jerked forward and began its huffing journey down the tracks.
We got Friday off from school due to the national Diwali holiday (India’s ‘festival of lights’), and we had made plans to spend the weekend in Kochi (formerly Cochin), Kerala’s largest city and its biggest tourist draw. Though we appreciated the simple comforts of Tirur, we had been looking forward to getting away all week. Hence, the jogging and the desperate search for car D1.
It would take four hours to get to Kochi. We settled into our seats in the middle of the packed second-class car and began to watch the tropical scenery roll by outside the grated windows. Keralites proudly call their native state ‘God’s Own Country’, a conceit borne of the lush countryside and natural beauty of the land. As if God would want to live anywhere else.
The train ride made me appreciate the Keralites’ pride a little more: swaying palm trees overhanging plush carpets of green jungle grass and rice paddies; meandering streams and lazy rivers cutting through idyllic farmland; bamboo huts around a bend; stucco houses with red-tile roofs stuck purposefully in the midst of jungle glades; an emerald hue cast to everything. The rain that began to fall an hour into the journey did not diminish this atmosphere but only added to its richness.
The train itself was packed. Many of the passengers were on their way to Thrissur—between Tirur and Kochi—a big festival center in Kerala that hosts many different celebrations between November and May. All the seats were filled and people stood in the aisles and at either end of the long car, milling near the doorways.
As inevitably happens in any public space in India, I got into a conversation. The young man sitting across from us leaned forward mid-way through the journey and asked where I was from. This led to a discussion that lasted us the next two hours. His name was Vinu, and he was a college student studying computer engineering in Calicut, a city north of Tirur. He was making his way back home for Diwali to visit his family near the Kochi airport, north of the main city.
“I was nervous to talk to you,” Vinu admitted after a while, with a smile. I gave him a questioning look. “I have never talked to an American before. I am afraid my English not so good. Maybe you would laugh at me.”
I patted him on the back, “I can understand you just fine. You’re doing great.” He nodded his head appreciatively. This reassurance seemed to prod him into deeper topics, which we discussed up to the limits of Vinu’s more-than-adequate English.
He talked of his family and how he was the oldest of three children. He was studying computer engineering in the hopes of getting a well-paying job after graduation. “My father is a tailor and my mother helps him. As the oldest child, it is my responsibility to help them when they retire. I will work for a while. Then, I come back here and live with them when they are old.”
Vinu said there were not very many good jobs in the technology field in Kerala. “I will have to go to Bangalore most likely. But for any good job, you have to know English well. That is the first thing they do in interviews: ask you about your English and test your skills.”
I told him that must put him under a lot of pressure—the twin responsibilities he feels to take care of his parents and learn English. He wanly smiled: “Yes, but I can manage. There is a lot of opportunity.”
Our talk digressed into politics (“Obama is coming here, nahn?” Vinu said brightly) and movies (“I hated Slumdog Millionaire. It showed only the worst of India.”). Vinu asked about America—where I was from, what I did before coming to India, when Jenna and I got married.
“America is a dream place,” he said. “That is how we think of it. Any Indian who goes there…never comes back,” he said laughing. “You can come here to India and leave easily. But you go to America: you can’t leave.”
He said he would like to go to America someday just to visit, and I asked him wouldn’t that tempt him to leave his parents? He smiled: “No way. Can’t leave them. Even for America.”
After what seemed like only ten minutes but what had actually been more than two hours, Vinu’s stop came. “I must leave, but I wanted to ask you something…” he said, as he rose to retrieve his backpack from the overhead bin. “Would you like to come to my brother’s wedding?”
I was shocked. “Sure,” I said. He handed us an invitation in a cream-colored envelope with cursive read writing. “It will be in Calicut. It would be great if you could come,” he said simply.
Then he waved as the train slowed down. “Goodbye. You are my first foreign friend,” he said shaking my hand. “But hopefully not my last.”
Thursday, November 4, 2010
En Espanol, por favor...
Jenna and I have traveled to the other side of the world to teach English. Yet, today, we found ourselves giving a lesson in Spanish.
“You teach me a little Spanish, nahn?” The request came from Santosh, a wiry man who teaches Biology at JM and usually sits next to Jenna and me in the teachers’ lounge. Santosh spends most of his time combing his bristly hair into a perfect coif and making the female teachers laugh with his rapid-fire commentaries on life, spoken in his impenetrable Malayalam.
He made his request on what was the fourth in a series of slow days at JM Higher Secondary. The students were in the midst of their yearly exams. Half the faculty was always on duty supervising the students as they tested, leaving the other half to while away time in the lounge. Some dutiful teachers graded papers or planned future lessons. Most of us, though, did more ignoble things: gossiped, texted, played games on our cell phones, read the newspaper. And this is how Santosh hit upon the idea of learning some basic Spanish.
“My Malayalam: good. Hindi: good. English: okay,” he said by way of explanation. “ My Spanish…” he said and made a face as if he had just downed a cupful of Kerala’s famous pickled mangoes, “My Spanish…is no good.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for not knowing Spanish,” I said. “Yeah, Nobody around here speaks it,” Jenna added helpfully. Santosh, casting himself as a man of letters, got out his notebook. “I want to know languages. Many languages. Teach me Spanish.”
Jenna and I looked at each other doubtfully. A few of the other teachers had become curious and were looking our way. Santosh has a knack for gaining the room’s attention. He opened his notebook to a blank page. Jenna and I did not know where to start. Luckily, Santosh already had a curriculum in mind.
“How you say: What is your name…in Spanish,” his pen poised over his notebook.
“Easy,” Jenna said. “Como se llama. Co-mo say YA-ma,” she repeated, emphasizing the pronunciation. We told Santosh how to spell it and he wrote the words down.
“Como se LA-ma,” he said.
“Como se YA-ma,” Jenna repeated. “Como se YA-ma,” Santosh repeated back, smiling broadly. By now, two other teachers had come over and were peering down at Santosh’s notebook.
“Say: My name is…in Spanish,” Santosh instructed.
“Me llamo Kyle,” I said. “Me YA-mo Kyle.” Santosh wrote this down, too.
He practiced excitedly, going back and forth between Jenna and me. Then, he turned to one of the teachers who had come over—an older man named Suresh—and said, “Como say LA-ma?”
Suresh smiled and said, “Me LA-mo Suresh!”
“Me YAAA-mo…” Jenna said to Suresh. “Of course, of course,” Suresh replied, shaking his head. “Me YAAA-mo Suresh.”
We repeated the process for other common phrases like ‘Good morning’, ‘Good night’, ‘Thanks’, ‘Please’ and ‘Goodbye’. Each time, Santosh garbled the translation but repeated the phrases until he had satisfied both himself and us. Then, he directed his burgeoning Spanish to an unsuspecting teacher sitting in another part of the room who had not been listening.
“BOO-nays no-CHIS, Safeera!” and Safeera looked up from her magazine puzzled.
“GRASS-ee-UHS, Girija,” and Girija turned around from another conversation and wrinkled her nose.
“AAA-dee-osh, Ambika!” and Ambika playfully snapped something back in Malayalam.
After a while of this, Santosh looked conspiratorially back to Jenna and me and asked in a hushed voice, “How to say...I love you?” His feline features stretched into a mischievous grin. His drooping mustache shook with excitement.
“Te amo,” Jenna said. “Tay AA-mo.”
“Te amo. Te amo. Te amo,” Santosh repeated it, low and secretively, as if it was a mantra with talismanic power. “Do not tell anyone else…the meaning of this,” he said, pointing to where he had written “Te amo” in his notebook.
Jenna and I nodded, now co-conspirators in whatever scheme Santosh was cooking up in his frenetic head.
To break the reverie, he looked up once again and shouted, “Me LA-mo Santosh! BOO-nays TUR-days, Noorja!” Noorja had been curiously looking on for some time. “BOO-na-wha?” she replied and erupted in laughter.
Jenna and I had to laugh, too. It seemed we were making an impact in two languages.
“You teach me a little Spanish, nahn?” The request came from Santosh, a wiry man who teaches Biology at JM and usually sits next to Jenna and me in the teachers’ lounge. Santosh spends most of his time combing his bristly hair into a perfect coif and making the female teachers laugh with his rapid-fire commentaries on life, spoken in his impenetrable Malayalam.
He made his request on what was the fourth in a series of slow days at JM Higher Secondary. The students were in the midst of their yearly exams. Half the faculty was always on duty supervising the students as they tested, leaving the other half to while away time in the lounge. Some dutiful teachers graded papers or planned future lessons. Most of us, though, did more ignoble things: gossiped, texted, played games on our cell phones, read the newspaper. And this is how Santosh hit upon the idea of learning some basic Spanish.
“My Malayalam: good. Hindi: good. English: okay,” he said by way of explanation. “ My Spanish…” he said and made a face as if he had just downed a cupful of Kerala’s famous pickled mangoes, “My Spanish…is no good.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for not knowing Spanish,” I said. “Yeah, Nobody around here speaks it,” Jenna added helpfully. Santosh, casting himself as a man of letters, got out his notebook. “I want to know languages. Many languages. Teach me Spanish.”
Jenna and I looked at each other doubtfully. A few of the other teachers had become curious and were looking our way. Santosh has a knack for gaining the room’s attention. He opened his notebook to a blank page. Jenna and I did not know where to start. Luckily, Santosh already had a curriculum in mind.
“How you say: What is your name…in Spanish,” his pen poised over his notebook.
“Easy,” Jenna said. “Como se llama. Co-mo say YA-ma,” she repeated, emphasizing the pronunciation. We told Santosh how to spell it and he wrote the words down.
“Como se LA-ma,” he said.
“Como se YA-ma,” Jenna repeated. “Como se YA-ma,” Santosh repeated back, smiling broadly. By now, two other teachers had come over and were peering down at Santosh’s notebook.
“Say: My name is…in Spanish,” Santosh instructed.
“Me llamo Kyle,” I said. “Me YA-mo Kyle.” Santosh wrote this down, too.
He practiced excitedly, going back and forth between Jenna and me. Then, he turned to one of the teachers who had come over—an older man named Suresh—and said, “Como say LA-ma?”
Suresh smiled and said, “Me LA-mo Suresh!”
“Me YAAA-mo…” Jenna said to Suresh. “Of course, of course,” Suresh replied, shaking his head. “Me YAAA-mo Suresh.”
We repeated the process for other common phrases like ‘Good morning’, ‘Good night’, ‘Thanks’, ‘Please’ and ‘Goodbye’. Each time, Santosh garbled the translation but repeated the phrases until he had satisfied both himself and us. Then, he directed his burgeoning Spanish to an unsuspecting teacher sitting in another part of the room who had not been listening.
“BOO-nays no-CHIS, Safeera!” and Safeera looked up from her magazine puzzled.
“GRASS-ee-UHS, Girija,” and Girija turned around from another conversation and wrinkled her nose.
“AAA-dee-osh, Ambika!” and Ambika playfully snapped something back in Malayalam.
After a while of this, Santosh looked conspiratorially back to Jenna and me and asked in a hushed voice, “How to say...I love you?” His feline features stretched into a mischievous grin. His drooping mustache shook with excitement.
“Te amo,” Jenna said. “Tay AA-mo.”
“Te amo. Te amo. Te amo,” Santosh repeated it, low and secretively, as if it was a mantra with talismanic power. “Do not tell anyone else…the meaning of this,” he said, pointing to where he had written “Te amo” in his notebook.
Jenna and I nodded, now co-conspirators in whatever scheme Santosh was cooking up in his frenetic head.
To break the reverie, he looked up once again and shouted, “Me LA-mo Santosh! BOO-nays TUR-days, Noorja!” Noorja had been curiously looking on for some time. “BOO-na-wha?” she replied and erupted in laughter.
Jenna and I had to laugh, too. It seemed we were making an impact in two languages.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Random Thoughts on a Slow Day
Picture: JM Higher Secondary School, a shot of the main campus from the main courtyward. It may not look pretty but it is full of life.
I write this on Halloween day and ‘Trick or Treat’ is the furthest thing from my mind. The routines and customs of Tirur are now so regular—so commonplace—as to supersede thoughts of anything I might be doing in America.
Updates on the midterm elections in the US reach us haphazardly, sometimes appearing as a blurb in the deep recesses of an Indian paper (usually with some end-of-the-world angle about the rise of the Tea Party). Football scores come to me distantly and after-the-fact, immediately taking away the sting of a defeat or the joy of a victory. I forget sometimes that the World Series is even happening and I now see the ludicrousness of it being called the World Series.
What matters now most is the here and now in Tirur—the shimmering heat, the violent and sudden rain squalls that signal the tempestuous end of the monsoon season here, the buzz of traffic, the five-times-a-day drone of the muezzin, the incessant honking of buses and rickshaws and motorbikes, the fluttering crown of palm trees that hangs over everything.
Our school matters, too. The caking of chalk dust that permeates our skin, our mouths, our fingers, our notebooks, our clothes. The dependable, reassuring chime of bells—signaling commencement of another forty minutes that seems to end before it has really begun. The clomp of hundreds of adolescent feet going up the stairs, down the stairs, to the courtyard, back to class, through the hall, towards the toilet. The parade of high-pitched voices saying “Hello sir, how are you” and “Good morning”, “Good afternoon”, “Good evening”.
These sounds and these sights, sometimes I think with no small amount of amazement, are now our lives, forever leaving an indelible stamp on our character and memories. The old saying is appropriate now more than ever: who would have guessed in a million years? I realize that sometime later, when we are back in America, Tirur will have locked itself someplace deep in our hearts never to be taken out. And that, certainly, amazes me, too.
We sometimes feel the clenching pain of homesickness—a thickening of the throat, a peach pit dropping in an empty stomach. Tirur is now Our Home. JM Higher Secondary is now Our Calling. But we can’t help but miss our real home--America. That is, after all, where there is beef and beer and (after more time to think) our friends and family. We feel it keenly on Saturdays and Sundays, with little else to do but lay around our apartment, reading or napping or watching bootlegged DVDs rented from a nearby market.
Our American pursuits have left us—cable TV, high-speed Internet, rec league softball, visits to the gym, barhopping on weekends. (You can’t barhop in Tirur because there is only ONE bar. One hop and you’re back home.)
Yet, we know once we’re back in America and we have all those things again—the cable, the Internet, the gym, the social life—along with a few additional things like grad school, jobs, steady incomes, and bills, we will want to get on the next plane and fly back to Tirur and blissfully attain the simple life again.
Missing Halloween, then, turned out to be not such a big deal. We cooked lunch, bought a new frying pan, watched Wolfman with Benicio del Toro and read the last of the books we brought with us from the US. After a time, we realized the day had passed us by and it was almost November. Plenty of Trick-or-Treats in our future, no need to bemoan the loss of this one.
Missing the MU-Nebraska game, also, is probably good for me, too. Since the Internet cafes were closed here Sunday I found that Mizzou lost nearly two days after the game ended. The Pony Express or a carrier pigeon possibly could have informed me sooner. Yet, a great competitive stress is relieved when I have to read the final score in a hot, crowded, noisy Internet café where the other patrons have never heard of a Cornhusker. It makes my life that much simpler being forced not to care about such things.
All I care about at the moment is the heat and the rumbling promise of rain in the sky, the chance to make dinner with my wife, and the knowledge that tomorrow I will be back to tasting chalk and teaching at JM Higher Secondary.
Updates on the midterm elections in the US reach us haphazardly, sometimes appearing as a blurb in the deep recesses of an Indian paper (usually with some end-of-the-world angle about the rise of the Tea Party). Football scores come to me distantly and after-the-fact, immediately taking away the sting of a defeat or the joy of a victory. I forget sometimes that the World Series is even happening and I now see the ludicrousness of it being called the World Series.
What matters now most is the here and now in Tirur—the shimmering heat, the violent and sudden rain squalls that signal the tempestuous end of the monsoon season here, the buzz of traffic, the five-times-a-day drone of the muezzin, the incessant honking of buses and rickshaws and motorbikes, the fluttering crown of palm trees that hangs over everything.
Our school matters, too. The caking of chalk dust that permeates our skin, our mouths, our fingers, our notebooks, our clothes. The dependable, reassuring chime of bells—signaling commencement of another forty minutes that seems to end before it has really begun. The clomp of hundreds of adolescent feet going up the stairs, down the stairs, to the courtyard, back to class, through the hall, towards the toilet. The parade of high-pitched voices saying “Hello sir, how are you” and “Good morning”, “Good afternoon”, “Good evening”.
These sounds and these sights, sometimes I think with no small amount of amazement, are now our lives, forever leaving an indelible stamp on our character and memories. The old saying is appropriate now more than ever: who would have guessed in a million years? I realize that sometime later, when we are back in America, Tirur will have locked itself someplace deep in our hearts never to be taken out. And that, certainly, amazes me, too.
We sometimes feel the clenching pain of homesickness—a thickening of the throat, a peach pit dropping in an empty stomach. Tirur is now Our Home. JM Higher Secondary is now Our Calling. But we can’t help but miss our real home--America. That is, after all, where there is beef and beer and (after more time to think) our friends and family. We feel it keenly on Saturdays and Sundays, with little else to do but lay around our apartment, reading or napping or watching bootlegged DVDs rented from a nearby market.
Our American pursuits have left us—cable TV, high-speed Internet, rec league softball, visits to the gym, barhopping on weekends. (You can’t barhop in Tirur because there is only ONE bar. One hop and you’re back home.)
Yet, we know once we’re back in America and we have all those things again—the cable, the Internet, the gym, the social life—along with a few additional things like grad school, jobs, steady incomes, and bills, we will want to get on the next plane and fly back to Tirur and blissfully attain the simple life again.
Missing Halloween, then, turned out to be not such a big deal. We cooked lunch, bought a new frying pan, watched Wolfman with Benicio del Toro and read the last of the books we brought with us from the US. After a time, we realized the day had passed us by and it was almost November. Plenty of Trick-or-Treats in our future, no need to bemoan the loss of this one.
Missing the MU-Nebraska game, also, is probably good for me, too. Since the Internet cafes were closed here Sunday I found that Mizzou lost nearly two days after the game ended. The Pony Express or a carrier pigeon possibly could have informed me sooner. Yet, a great competitive stress is relieved when I have to read the final score in a hot, crowded, noisy Internet café where the other patrons have never heard of a Cornhusker. It makes my life that much simpler being forced not to care about such things.
All I care about at the moment is the heat and the rumbling promise of rain in the sky, the chance to make dinner with my wife, and the knowledge that tomorrow I will be back to tasting chalk and teaching at JM Higher Secondary.
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