Before I start passing on partly unsubstatiated rumors let me say that my studies are going well and that within the last week I have found a surge of speaking proficiency from within. I have begun daily study with M.N. and he presses me to speak and write without preparation or my books. I find that I often am able to express myself to his satisfaction, and I continually experience the student’s thrill of feeling luck at having just hours before learned the answer to the question my teacher asks.
Now the dirt, starting with Western hippie stereotypes. Hippies smell bad and smoke marijuana. Marijuana is purchasable illegally by locals right next to the liquor store up from Assi Ghat. Foreigners, of course, are pressed to buy it at every crossroads, and that is how dirty hippies get their pot. It is well into summer now. The weather is warm, and lack of bathing for fear of cold is even less plausible than it was when the weather was cool.
I posted an ad on craigslist to try to get other Western non-hippie tenants in the house. There is talk of moving Devanon and Lara from the house. The talk of Lara is that she is a water demoness. Undoubtedly, her water consumption is in excess of 500 litres daily and if it could be metered I would not be shocked to learn that more than 1000 flows through her control. The cleaning lady says that she likes to change water in her 500 litre tank daily, but no one knows why she has that tank (and other smaller ones totaling another 500L).
Last night she tried to give Nandan some vegetables that she cooked, and Nandan refused as he always does. He was especially direct this time, but still she left her bowl behind. The talk is that whenever she ruins her food she gives it to us downstairs. This, the armchair psychologists think, is to compensate in her mind her habit of “borrowing” several consumable goods daily, particularly foodstuffs.
On May 15 Devanon and Lara and Shaker leave for Italy. The talk is that this is because of city-imposed water restrictions over the summer. Nandan tells me that these restrictions are minor, but Lara needs to return to her home in Italy. Chandan, Nandan’s brother who regularly visits Italy, says that her home city is near a mountain and so it gets a lot of water from melted snow.
Lara and Devanon spend a lot of money. Devanon showed me his new laptop and it is modern by Western standards. But he does not have internet. It would cost about $50 to run a cable to the road and then $10 a month for broadband. These are small numbers compared to a $1000 computer. I could say other things… and these people pay Rs 1800 for four bedrooms plus common area, kitchen, and bath in their flat. I pay Rs 1500 (about $35) for my one room. The point is that Lara thinks she is being shrewd, but the family could use the money a lot more than her and they only quoted her a friendly rate because Hindu custom prescribes family discounts. I think that it is not right for these people to spend what they do and show off their money when their hosts live by a different standard, and it is all the more grating to see things like the computer when they do not know how to use them.
They also do not pay for water simply because the city does not charge. Nandan’s family pays for the electricity to pump it to their room, and when the pump broke last week Nandan’s family paid to repair it. They scam on electricity by not having a meter installed. Their room is illegally connected to the city supply in such a way that they pay a nominal fee for a safety connection, but this is not appropriate for a residence connection. Nandan and family are Brahmin and they have some religious reservations about knowing about this.
Nandan wants to move four foreigners into their place and I want to help him, and I think that Rs 3000 per room plus at least Rs 1500 would be extremely low by the standards of the city. Any student or anyone like me would be grateful to pay that much only.
I talked with Seema a couple of days ago and I think that I will be making the trip to the Punjab by Monday. She arrived and was joking as always; it cheered me to hear her British accent. I am interested to see how such a tidy young lady keeps herself in the wilds of the Punjabi fields at this hot time of year.
Nandan says that Sikhs and potatos are everywhere, and that Sikhs have some kind of circadian rhythm which causes them to be businesslike during the day but go nuts daily from about six o’clock in the evening until right before they go to bed. He says that they also get a boost in intelligence when they go crazy, and that if it were possible to keep a Sikh awake long enough to utilize the intelligence after the madness wore off, then Sikhs could revolutionize the world. I have no idea where he got this elaborate theory but I am looking forward to see how Seema’s behavior compares to her native family’s.
Now the Muslims. Nandan sometimes asks me about Christianity, and then I ask him about Hinduism, or vice versa. But after that, he always deadpans, “…but Muslims do X. It is holy/sacred/righteous for them.” So here are some conversations I remember:
L: Is the cow sacred to Hindus?
N: Yes, when you are a baby you drink your mother’s milk. And when you are older you drink cow’s milk, so the cow is the mother that sustains you. We pray to the cow because we are grateful for milk. (note the foreign usage of the word “pray”- the word does not translate entirely or properly into English). Does Christianity have a sacred animal?
L: The lamb often refers to Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is represented in art by a dove. We sometimes pray to the Lamb of God in words, but we do not need proximity to or pay respect to a real animal as you sometimes do.
(here we ask questions of each other, and then-)
L: Do Muslims respect the cow?
N: No, they pray on the pig. It is a holy animal for them.
(upon my seeing a colorful Hindu wedding party-)
L: Wow, that’s beautiful.
N: Do Christian girls dress up in bright colors to get married?
L: No, they typically were white. Hindu colors are considered wild to Westerners, and white is considered to be a peaceful color. What do Muslims wear?
N: Muslims wear black. It is a peaceful color to them.
(upon taking a few drops of Ganges water from a pandit)
L: What does this water mean?
N: It is ritual cleaning. You do what you like with it.
L: Catholics have this at the entrances to churches.
N: Muslims wash too – (Nandan demonstrates a stylized washing method whereby he cups water in one hand, splashes in on the wrist of his same arm, and washes strangely) This method is important to them.
And so on-
When Muslims kill an animal for meat or sacrifice, they do it with a saw rather than a knife. They open neck veins and let the animal bleed rather than killing it outright. In Muslim neighborhoods the remains of animals are not properly disposed of.
Hindu and Western dining standards proscribe that each person has a plate onto which food is placed from a serving bowl. When Muslims eat they do so as a group, sharing one communal bowl with no individual plates.
There was an article in the Benarasi newspaper some weeks ago about how getting your child vaccinated does not make him gay. Nandan tells me that social workers will take this concept into Muslim areas but will not be fully convincing.
When Muslim males urinate in public they wipe the urine from the tip of their penises with a rock when they are done. They then throw the rock back onto the street. This is for cleanliness.
Cricket has a fanatical following here. Many Hindus support both India and Pakistan, but Indian Muslims only support Pakistan. Recently, and presumably due to the Pakistani team’s loss in the World Cup, someone murdered their coach.
On the news the team gave a statement that they did not want to play if their countrymen continued to threaten them with death for losing. The team is never able to appear without the highest security anywhere.
Muslims breed rapidly and far beyond their economic empowerment. Gandhi is cursed by many Hindus for allowing Muslims to stay in India after splitting the country. Politicians must pander to the Muslim vote, and politics in this country typically means promising banal public benefits to individuals within a group rather than the monumental public works projects which characterize government expenditure in the West. The thought is that the Muslim population will reach a critical level, at which time they will vote to divide India again, and Jammu and Kashmir and whatever else will go to Pakistan.
Nandan and Rajan are of the opinion that Muslims will do anything that they think furthers their religion. In particular, they think that the Muslims always have rioting on their minds.
Muslim male youth in India have some capacity for rebellion. They dress in loud clothes that look good to my Western tastes but undoubtedly must be to the consternation of their fathers. I am glad to see this and I hope that it is significant. Rebellion leads to education and hopefully education leads to less breeding… more healthcare… more sanitation… less bloody murder…
Before coming here I had no idea how segregated from the rest of society that Muslim tradition is. In Varanasi, at least, people who I consider to be reasonable have fear of Muslims as a whole.