A day in the life

A friend of mine asked about my day-to-day activities, and I thought I would share it here.

On weekdays I get up between 7:50-8:20am. I put together some kind of food for lunch, either packing leftovers from dinner or cooking something new. At work we each bring a container of rice for ourselves, and then a dish to share (and sometimes also a bit of curd (plain yogurt) to share). I generally bring an Indian-style omelet (eggs, onions, green chili's, salt, chili powder, tumeric); potatoes with veggies and spice; veggie stir fry (sometimes with soy protein chunks which are available at our grocery store); egg fried rice with veggies; dal (lentils); chinese stir fry (tofu, veggies, soy sauce or ginger-garlic sauce). I also sometimes cook the night before so I don't have to cook in the morning.

If Lily is showering, she heats water for me on the stove after she is done with hers; if she isn't I get up and put on a pot of water for myself, which I then add to a 3/4-full bucket of cold water from the porch tap, or if that tap isn't working (as is sometimes the case), the tap in the other bathroom. I use a pail to use the now warmish water from the bucket to shower and wash my hair. (Even though I shower every day, sometimes when I rub my skin at night bits of black dead skin rub off. This is because of the pollution I am exposed to commuting to and from work, and just living in a polluted city. Even more disturbing is that sometimes my snot will turn black, filled with soot from the air. Yum.) I use Herbal Essences products, my brand from home, which I buy here in my supermarket for about the same price as Indian shampoo and conditioner I've seen here.

I get dressed in one of my 6 Kurta's (Indian tops) which I pair with Salwar pants and a dupatta (scarf) or my capri's or jeans, eat eggs or mango cornflakes with soymilk for breakfast, and head out the door with Lily, in search of an auto that will take us to work and charge us on the meter (usually not a problem to find). Lily takes me the 10-20 minutes to work, then takes the auto on to her work. Alone it costs me about Rs 30 ($.75); she pays about Rs 50 for the ride. I then walk about 10 leisurely minutes to work, stopping to watch/photograph the water buffalo that more often than not are walking the same route as me, sometimes guided by little kids or a man whipping them with a small stick, sometimes seemingly guided by themselves. Some of them have painted red horns.



My office starts at 10:00am and because I carpool with Lily, I arrive early and am the first to arrive besides our tea lady, cleaning lady, and chore boy. After taking the lift (elevator) to the fourth floor, I remove my shoes and place them in the shoe rack before walking into the office. At work I do various cool things, which most recently has involved creating a 30-day gender and human rights course that we intend to put on for college kids. 1:00pm is lunch, which involves us all putting our rice on our stainless steel plates and passing our other dishes around so everyone gets a bit ("Teskondi" they tell me, which means "take" in Telugu). Padma, our tea lady, puts two bottles of water and a couple cups, along with a bunch of stainless steel plates and spoons, on the plastic table cloth which she puts on the table/s. We use our right hands to eat, and our left hands to pass things, rip roti pieces (thin bread), serve ourselves from the stainless steel tiffins ("Boxes" they call them; we would call them metal tupperware) with spoons, and drink water. Water is consumed, whether from a communal or personal bottle/cup, by holding the container about 2 inches above one's mouth, tilting one's head back, and pouring into one's mouth. I can barely pour more than a mouthful without having to stop and swallow; they can poor entire full cups of water seemingly down their throats. Even little kids drink water this way; I have found it difficult to learn, but fun to try.

My office closes at 5:30, at which point I walk to the bus, usually with my coworker, Anu, who lives near me. It takes between 30-90 minutes to get home, depending on how long we need to wait for a bus, how long it takes for a bus to stop (sometimes they won't stop), and how bad the traffic is. The bus from work to home costs Rs5 which is about $.13 (thirteen cents). I exit the bus, occasionally jumping off as it slows in traffic nearer to my house than the bus stop is. I walk home, often stopping to buy vegetables on the way.

For veggies, we go to a more-or-less permanent vegetable stand, where we pay a fixed price per kilogram for our purchases. We are given a wicker or plastic bucket to collect our veggies in. I spend about 80-100 rupees ($2-2.50) on a huge bag of veggies: a dozen onions, a dozen tomatoes, garlic, eggplant, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots. When we want fruits we go to a mobile stand (usually a wooden cart with wheels that the vendors take wherever they feel business is best) and get whatever is in season. Mangoes haven't been available since we got here; custard apples were in for Oct-Nov (and I am going through withdrawal now that they are gone); oranges just came in season. It's strange eating produce based on what is seasonally available, though I suppose it's stranger living in a place where you can get any produce all-year round. We get the rest of our food from local grocery stores, such as rice, lentils, olive oil, honey, soy milk, tofu, Gouda, juice, cereal, pasta, jam, bread, papadum. We actually eat a mostly vegan and wheat-free diet in the house, with the exception of eggs and toast for breakfast, and cheese as a treat.

We spend between 1-2.5 hours cooking dinner every night. We have a rice maker, several pots, a microwave, two burners and no oven. We have a medium-sized fridge that our landlord gave us.

Other activities include going out with our friends, watching movies, having friends over for dinner, going to good restaurants, reading, writing snail mail (email me if you want a postcard!), doing laundry in a bucket, going to tourist areas such as the lake or a park, cooking, chasing mosquito's with a tennis racket-shaped bug electrocution toy, and for me most recently, sleeping in a mosquito net because we suddenly have tons of mosquitos. I brush my teeth with filtered water because the tap water is bad (unsuitable for drinking).

"Can I ask you about your dot?"

After work, I was walking to the bus with Anu, who lives near my neighborhood. She was saying that I would be the center of attention when I went to the communalism workshop in the village of Mahbubnagar. I told her I don't mind when women and children stare at me, because the women generally smile back when I smile at them, and the kids like to say "hi! hi! hi!" and are super cute. It's the men staring that bothers me, because it is creepy and if I were to smile at them, as I do with the women, it would be interpreted disturbingly incorrectly. I know I'm a foreigner, I told her, but I still don't like the assumption that I am rich/easy/exciting just because I am a white woman. Why do all these men have to stare at me?

Anu was silent for a moment, and then asked me what would happen if an Indian woman came to America - would they get similar treatment?

"Oh no," I said. "They might stare, but it would be less sexual and more just because she was different... and we might talk louder to her, even if she spoke perfect English because people who speak English with an Indian accent are assumed to be intermediate in their English-speaking abilities, and ask her if 'Indian' was her first language... and we might institutionally discr iminate against her, but just a little, and somewhat subtly... and we might not stare so overtly in public, but instead fetishize her... And if it were an Indian Muslim women who wore a Burqa we would definitely stare, and comment in an airport that she would be thoroughly searched, because she is likely a suicide bomber, or part of an islamofacist terrorist mutiny, and talk openly about how oppressed she was by her men because she has to wear that awful thing, because clearly no woman would ever willingly choose such a burden, and...

"Oh."

Oh Lily, you came and you brought me a turkey

Thanksgiving in India! My roommates and I made a Thanksgiving dinner tonight. The three of us were joined by Sylvia, the 72 year old American volunteer at Shlayma's work from NYC, and Blanca, a woman from Madrid who recently moved into our neighborhood and is attending the Nutrition Institute in Secunderabad. We had no oven, no turkey, and three vegetarians (me, Shlayma and Blanca), so we were quite unsure what to make at first...


Our first course was a spread of appetizers. The gherkins and olives were a rare treat, despite not being very good.

For our main course, Lily made an unbelievable "turkey" made of mashed potatoes, carrots and eggplant.



I think Lily should focus her future on being a food artist...


We also had green beans and apple cider, and a rice stuffing that I made. For the stuffing, I mixed red and white rice, and put in onions, green onions (scallions), mushrooms, green pepper, walnuts, cashews, apple, raisins, tumeric, coriander, chili powder, and salt.


Blanca and Sylvia brought the desserts, though by that time we were pretty much too full to eat anything.

As I neglected to make a Halloween dinner post last month, I have to end with further proof of Lily's artistic ability with food.


Mashed potato head with a knife and blood, lentils/dal as "bloody guts", steaming apple cyder, green beans aka "snakes in the grass", and carrots as ladies fingers.


What an artist.

Diwali

Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights. Technically Diwali (also known as Deepavali) is a 5-day festival, but last Friday, what I believe is the third day, was the most important (I think). In preparation for Diwali, many people clean their houses and buy new clothes to wear on Diwali. They also may decorate their houses with drawings and candles. In Hyderabad, everyone burns crackers (firecrackers), and there are lots of firework shows on display, most of them amateur. Many people told me that eating sweets is also part of Diwali. It's a big holiday in India and though we had heard a lot of hype about it, we still had no plans or idea what to do on Wednesday. And then, Thursday morning, the invitations started rolling in.

Thursday night we had dinner at Shlayma's boss's house. She dressed Lily and Shlayma up in Saree's (I was already wearing a brand new Salwar Kameez that I got stitched from material I bought the week before).

Shlayma, me and Lily

Friday morning we went to brunch at a restaurant with Lily's boss, her husband, and another of Lily's coworkers. We did not eat breakfast since we were on our way to brunch. On our way out the door, we grabbed a box of sweets to offer to our neighbors from our floor, who we have only said hello to so far. We knocked on each of their doors, bearing a box of sweets from which they could pick and choose their favorites. The first took, retreated into her flat as her little daughter took our sweets, and returned moments later with a plate with three fried chapati's (flat circular bread). The second held out her own box of sweets as we held out ours, and we exchanged sweets. The third woman invited us in, and gave us square pieces of bread-like substances fried in ghee (special butter) and sugar. So all in all, despite trying not to eat before brunch, we had about 2000 calories each before leaving our apartments.


Our neighbors handpainted their door frames in preparation for Diwali.

When we finally made it to brunch, we all ordered Dosa's, one of my favorite South Indian foods. Shlayma ordered a paper dosa, which is thin but huge
Paper dosa

Lily and I went to my coworker's house for her Pooja and then for dinner and burning crackers. The Pooja was really interesting, they had an elaborate alter with many offerings and a small statue of the goddess Lakshmi (who they worship during Diwali, or maybe just during this day of Diwali...). The offerings included candles, a banana, a coconut, a custard apple (my favorite fruit), cashews, several sweets, and flowers. My coworker's sister-in-law sang all 1008 (yes, one thousand and eight, not a typo) of Lakshmi's names.


Lakshmi's alter for the Pooja

Aparna and me

While burning crackers in the yard, we heard and saw crackers being burned in every direction, from probably every house. It was very loud and bright and intense. We took an auto to Banjara Hills, where a friend of an old volunteer names Apoorva (now our friend) lives. We got charged extra since it was the night of a holiday, which was OK because we were lucky we got an auto at all. The drive was filled with crazy blasting sounds and fire and light coming from various places. Sometimes we would have to stop short because people were burning crackers in the street.


Me burning a sparkler

At Apoorva's we met up with Shlayma and a friend of someone on our program in Mumbai who was in Hyderabad for a job interview. The 5 of us did a small Pooja, then used the candles to do Shabbat. It was a nice sharing of religious ceremonies, and it was nice for Apoorva because it was his first Diwali away from his home in Delhi (he moved to Hyderabad for work). Apoorva's mom sent a box of fancy chocolates from a famous sweet shop in Delhi; Lily, a chocoholic, was in heaven all weekend.


Fancy chocolates

We watched fireworks from Apoorva's roof, which overlooks the city. There were fireworks from about 6 directions, all night; all night, and all weekend, there were crazy loud booms and bangs going off all over the city.


This is looking out off Apporva's roof during the day

Saturday we went to Chutney's, a nice restaurant, and then walked in this pretty park. We went out with Apoorva's friends to a club at the Taj Krishna, a posh 5-star hotel in Banjara Hills. It's strange going to a club, or even to most places in Banjara Hills, and seeing so many people donning Western clothes; in the club I think I was the only one wearing Indian garments. At work I am the only one who regularly wears any Western articles; my boss once wore a polo shirt and jeans, and a coworker wore a t-shirt with a skirt last week.

All in all, it was a lovely 4-day festival Diwali weekend in Hyderabad.

Lost and found

The autorikshaw's in Hyderabad/Secunderabad have been on strike for about 36 hours. Yesterday morning I took the bus entirely incident-free (I take the bus home, but hadn't yet taken it in the morning since I carpool in an autorikshaw with my roommate). So this morning I waited at the theoretical bus stop (which actually involves less of waiting at a bus stop, and more or waiting in a general area and trying to spot the right bus number then chasing it down as it comes to a moving stop, depending of the traffic) and hopped on several 250's, and each of them told me no, we are not going to Rail Niliyam. I didn't understand why, but finally got on one that said although they were not going there, they would go to Secunderabad. 'Oh good,' I thought, 'I know how to walk to work from Secunderabad bus station.'

So I get out at Secunderabad, and find I don't recognize anything... I walked around and headed in the direction I was pointed by several bus employees. I saw a bunch of vacant auto's lined up along a busy road, and then about 50 men on foot holding red signs, formed a huge circle at the large intersection, and began chanting. Moving away from the striking auto drivers' movement and traffic-blocking tactics, I walked some more and found myself at - Secunderabad railway station. I was nearly late for work, and so I asked an elderly gentleman where was Rail Niliyam? He said, "wait a few minutes and I'll drop you there." So we waited for his daughter and son-in-law to arrive on a train, then they drove me to my work neighborhood, and I arrived only 10 minutes late to work.


I also lost my wallet last weekend, or the change purse I was using as a wallet so as not to lose all my important cards, so I only lost a bunch of cash and my Debit card (I'd visited the ATM to get money the day before I lost it).

A couple photos

One day near the end of the workday, a bunch of my coworkers asked to see photos of my family and school. This is about one third of the women who work in my office.




This is me on my first day in India, wearing my two backpacks, which is all that I brought to India

Maybe TV is right, TV is always right...

We have a TV in our office, though it's covered with some cloth and I didn't notice it until last week when several women turned it on periodically to check the score in the cricket Australia vs. India games.

Just now, they turned it on again, and everyone who is in the office (several women are out today on various trainings) came and crowded around. I inquired about the commotion and someone explained that it was a wedding of a famous Telugu movies star's second daughter. I was confused as to why this was exciting to them, let alone newsworthy. The wedding wasn't particularly glamorous, and I thought perhaps the lines of squiggly Telugu going by on the news screen might have offered some sort of explanation (but alas, my Telugu training does not start until next week).

After several minutes of watching, they turned of the TV. One of them noticed my bewildered look and said, "that is the daughter of a famous movie star. She is getting married... against her parent's wishes." I asked how they knew that, and they said why else would it be so sensationalized by the press?

My knowledge of arranged marriages is still quite limited. I know that it is quite common in India, and seems to involve parents choosing a match for their child based on various factors. The divorce rate is much lower; however, divorce seems to be heavily stigmatized here, and the blame is placed largely on the woman (regardless if she left an abusive relationship, she is criticized for not having been able to take care of her husband). Of the various married women in my office, many of them had arranged marriages. My supervisor had a 'love marriage' also known as a 'choice marriage'; my counterpart (who is my age) said she would never have an arranged marriage. Someone from Shlayma's work asked me if I would have an arranged marriage or a love marriage, and I tried to explain that arranged marriages aren't really something we consider in my culture. One of my roommates said a woman in her office told her about her arranged marriage. She said that she was too shy to speak to her future husband, so he would come over and talk and she would listen. She never spoke to him until their wedding day.

I'm trying to be aware of the fact that I am in a different culture where they have different customs and beliefs that are informed by different values, call it being culturally sensitive or having an open mind. I like the fact that I am working with an Indian NGO that is working on issues they see as important for women in India; I don't know if I would be comfortable working for a Western NGO that was intent on making change in some foreign country, imposing our views on them. Us vs. Them. The civilized vs. the Other. This way, I know I am working alongside 20 individuals who believe that we need to change the position of woman in India - and each of these individuals are female and Indian, and are educated in fields related to our work.

Getting set up

My towel had ants on it so I threw it in a bucket with some soap and left it overnight, and then rinsed it for about an hour but it was till soapy, so I let it try and it is now a cloth-rock. So I bought a new pink fluffy large fancy towel, which only cost me about $6.00.

We have two bathrooms in our flat. The water doesn’t work in one bathroom, the one that has the Indian style toilet and shower head and sink. We shower with a bucket which we take from the tap in the other bathroom or from the tap on the balcony (where we hang out laundry). We have no form of hot water besides boiling some on the stove and mixing it with water from the tap in a bucket. We have a tank that we need to turn on so it fills up, and turn off when it was full. When it is full, it overflows through a tube into a large bucket in the bathroom.

We do laundry in a bucket. Packaged Tide here has directions for doing bucket laundry.

We don’t have AC (nor do we need it right now since it is Monsoon season which equals extremely nice weather). We have two fans in the living room/dining room area, and a fan in each bedroom.

Sometimes the power goes out randomly (this happens at work, too). It usually comes on after about 20 minutes or so. Not always. We keep flashlights, candles and matches nearby so we are can continue cooking or eating when the power goes out. It sucks when the power goes out on a hot night (this happened in Delhi) just as you are trying to fall asleep, and you try and ignore the happy heat taking over as the fan slowly winds down and turns off.

No one seems to refrigerate anything here. When we were refrigerator shopping we couldn’t find any used ones, and all the new ones were really expensive. In this country, electronics can be a lot more expensive that the USA, as opposed to food and clothing and other things, which are a lot cheaper.

When we arrived in Hyderabad, someone from Lily's work collected us from Secunderabad train station. We took cabs through horrendous traffic and finally arrived in Tarnaka. We went to the wrong apartment building and terrified several tenants by knocking on their doors and asking if we were living there - turns out we were about a block and a half from our place. Below is several of us Southerners in the rain, wearing/carrying our luggage and looking annoyed as we searched for the correct apartment buildings. Also below is Lily, Shlayma and I after being caught in monsoon rains after grocery shopping:


Last weekend my roommates and I went to Osmania University and walked around. We found a nice building and a garden:


There is a park near my work. This is a photo of it; as seen in the picture, there is frequently garbage on fire in this park:


These are the signs outside my work. On the second sign, the characters below the English are Telugu:


Per request of my lovely uncle, I have added some photos on previous entries (such as the train journey) – see below.

Working hard or hardly working?

Our Hyderabad flat is nice. It’s a 2-bedroom, and Shlayma and I each have our own room (Lily has shelves and a bed in my room, too – technically we share a room but she sleeps in the living room on the bed we use as a couch). We have been sharing cooking and cleaning. We’ve found various markets to shop, we buy fresh vegetables every other day or even everyday, and experiment with cooking, especially in our new rice maker. We also have an Idly maker, and have been making instant Idly – yum! We live in a residential neighbourhood in Tarnaka, in Secunderabad (Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities). Shlayma walks about 50 feet to her NGO; Lily and I carpool in the morning and she drops me off then takes the aoturikshaw to her work, about 40 minutes away. Mine takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on traffic. I have been taking the bus home for the past few days. We both use handkerchefs to cover our mouth during the autorikshaw ride so we don't have to breath in as much pollution.

So far I really enjoy my work. There are about 20 women in my office and they are extremely nice. There are no men in my NGO, with the exception of a boy who does our errands (locks and unlocks the office, goes to the post office, gets breakfast or lunch from a local hotel restaurant if we want it, etc). (I can’t help but wonder if there is something to the fact that we are an all-female organization, except for this boy, who is our bitch.) We have a tea lady who brings everyone their personalized version of chai at 10:30ish and 3:30ish. I always thank her, and she laughs and thanks me back, or does the traditional head-nod that means "yes" in India, particularly in the South (moving one's head side-to-side). My roommates and I are each getting quite good at he head nod, and even do it in answering each other.

We have the entire floor of an apartment building. When you arrive on the fourth floor in the lift (or stairs if the power is out), you remove your shoes and place them in the shoe stand. When you go in the bathroom, there are two pairs of communal shoes, one larger, one smaller, to wear into your choice of an Indian of Western stall.

At lunchtime, everyone in the office sits at a large circular table and puts what they brought in the middle of the table. “Take some and pass it,” they say to me every time they hand me anything. We eat with our right hand (never with the left hand, never with silverware) off of metal plates. There is always more than enough rice, and I get to try various home cooked Indian dishes, which vary every day. Things are spicy, but I have been OK with everything I have eaten so far here. Home cooked Indian food is very different than food you get in Indian restaurants in the states or even in India. I try and bring something each day, but so far have been a bit embarrassed by my cooking skills (in part because of my limited cooking experience, in part because I’m not sure how to cook with Indian spices, and in part because we just don’t have that much cooking stuff yet at our flat and don’t know the best places to buy food). One time I brought mango cornflakes, but everyone took some when I passed it. Today I brought banana’s and put in an order for a Dosa (a rice-flour filled with potato dish) from the hotel.

For the first few days I read the annual reports of my NGO and read an alternative report of India on CEDAW (UN Commission to End Discrimination Against Women) which has helped me better understand what my NGO does, and has made me more familiar with women’s issues in India. I went to two trainings: One was at a girl’s college for girl child day, and we did a photo exhibit on the girl child with these beautiful photos by this professional photographer, then screened a movie on the girl child (made by my NGO) and had a discussion and open forum with the students (about 300). The other was at a college near where I live, and we held an essay and poster competition on women’s issues. 50 participants came, 4 of them boys, and made 45 essays and 5 posters. Participants arrived at 10:0am and had 2 hours to write an essay or design a poster. They could write in English, Hindi or Telugu; I helped judge the 20 or so essays in English, and gave out the prizes to the winners.

For the past week I have been working on making a data base of women’s studies and gender issue articles that have appeared in Economic and Political Weekly in the past 20 years. This has also helped familiarize me with relevant issues specific to India as I read abstracts on many articles each day, then compile the title, issue and volume number, date, and keywords into an excel document.

Monday, I met with my supervisor. She has written with one of my favourite gender and development authors, Nira Yuval-Davis. She told me that the Indian government is forming an Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to deal with discrimination across gender, sex, class, race, religion, caste, and disability, as well as combinations within these category (double or multiple minorities). The UK and Australia have EOC’s but these deal exclusively with gender and sex discrimination. The government is putting together a committee of 7 experts to design the structure, functioning, issues, and remedial powers of this commission. My supervisor is the only woman on this committee, along with a Dalit man, a Muslim man, and some other representative men (though all men). Their committee meets today for the first time, and has about 3 months to come up with a report and plan for the EOC design. For the next 3 months, I am doing research on the EOC, and the intersection of multiple minority statuses, for my supervisor and her role as a member of this committee. So far this seems like the perfect job.

Hyderabad at last

Yesterday was Yom Kippor. I had a stomach sickness for two days before it, so after deliberation decided to fast with water (instead of with no water). Being in India on Yom Kippur, seeing people who are poorer than I can really comprehend, people who have no choice whether or not to drink clean water (tap water in India is contaminated, at least for drinking purposes), was quite a powerful experience. We fasted from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday; Friday we each left work early and went out to a restaurant; saturday we cooked dinner in our flat. Lily has been sick since we broke the fast and has been throwing up today. Wednesday and Thursday my stomach was hurting really badly, but I still managed to go to work since I felt fine other than that. I went to a doctor on Thursday night, it cost 150 Rupees ($3.75) to see the doctor at the emergency clinic at 11pm, and I got to see her immediately. She told me to drink liquids and gave me a prescription that I opted against taking.

Between trains

This morning we took 5 cabs down the mountain at 6:15am. The 17 of us took the train from Deridun to Delhi. Although it was a 7 hour ride, we were in second class AC (yes, air conditioning) and in sleeper berths. I thought they were very comfortable and am now feeling good about our Delhi-Hyderabad 21-hour ride, which begins 3 hours from now.

There are two Americans that lived above our hotel near Mussoorie. They hung out with us while we were at the hotel. On Friday they invited us up to their flat and through a party. It was a nice goodbye.

Tomorrow in Hyderabad...

Sleeper train photos



Porters carrying Shlayma's giant bag

Pictures from Delhi

Now that I have figured out how to put photos in my blog, here are some from the four days the 6 of us Southerners spent in limbo in Delhi. I went sightseeing with Leah and Lily and saw many interesting things.

We went to the Baha'i/Lotus temple:

It has 9 pools around it which act as a natural cooling system.

We also went to the Qutub Minar, which has a minaret (huge tower) and some wicked ruins:

We went on a tour of Old Delhi with Leah's Indian friend:

A few days earlier, Leah and I visited Humayun's Tomb, which was incredible:

Delhi is quite hot in August, and because the city is so polluted I constantly have dirt under my fingernails from scratching bites or rubbing sweaty dry skin. But I like Delhi.