French Fries and Field Studies

Here is another little something for the create aim of my blog.

It is called a French fry.  It looks like a French fry—but alas, it is not a French fry.  

In the same way that Skype is almost like seeing people from back home, the toilets are seemingly functional, and English hopes to be standardized among English speakers across the globe—a French fry is just not a French fry here in McLeod Ganj, because, well, it is just not home.  

This has been one of the largest frustrations I’ve had with this location for a field study.  Maybe it is because I keep comparing it to Ghana (which I recognize is a bad move—apples and oranges), but I have found that living in a village without the possibility of such luxuries is easier to stomach than having the possibility of them taunting you—posing as something familiar, but in reality, being more foreign than you could ever imagine.  I have no problem with being in unfamiliar territory and living without French fries, cell phones, hot showers, flushing toilets, and electricity for months or years of my life, but why are they pestering me here?

In “Street Hauntings,” a personal essay by Virginia Woolf, she identifies with a moth batting at flames or a light bulb—constantly trying to get to the core, but always condemned an outsider.  I can’t help but feel I can also relate in this moment.  Last night I was keenly aware of it.

I got home later than usual and decided to sit in the back room with my host sisters to watch some of their Hindi soap operas.  Bonding time.  I tried to squat next to them.  One sister insisted that I take her seat cushion.  I wouldn’t take it.  Neither did she.  It stayed on the floor between us.

Snot and Stories

I have a snot flinger for a host grandma.  We sit on the balcony together while I read and she flings visible amounts of mucus off of the second story of our complex with one swift motion with the back of her hand.  The leftovers she wipes underneath the chair without shame.  She is an eighty something year traditional Tibetan woman with unusually large pupils, long wire-like hair, and has facial features oriented not unlike a Picasso portrait.  I speak no Tibetan.  She speaks no English.  The barrier is so blatant it feels physical sometimes, reminding me that India, like all of us really, seem to be both defined and divided by religion and language.  

Our language setback does not discourage her from trying to communicate in some way or another.  The first week I was here she came walking into my room with a pair of woolen mittens.  She tossed them on the chair, looked up and appeared in shock that I was actually in the room, and backed out.  That was all.  The next week my host sister removed the mysterious mittens from my room.  

The next morning she stuck a bracelet on my arm, her wrinkly hands shaking as she tried to tie it securely on my wrist.  I did not know what to say.  I didn’t even know if it was actually for me or not.  I tried to show my appreciation with an awkward side hug, and that was probably the beginning of our relationship, because later that afternoon she felt free to tell me to move to a seat farther away from her because she was expecting a family friend within the hour.  

This woman walked across the Himalayas to escape Tibet, but now she cannot walk down the congested street without waving her cane at oncoming traffic in a futile effort to get them to stop.  I want to talk to her, but no one translates.  She is a walking coffin of untold stories.  Probably a bit senile too, but there is still something about her that makes me want to sit near her and soak in her narrative.

For now, we are just balcony friends.  Me with my books and half formed thoughts.  Her with her snot and silent stories. 

Virginia

Aurm and Palm Reading

I met a gem of an informant last week.  He fits nowhere in the skeleton plan I had for my travel essays, but somehow gets his own category as an “unforeseen character.”  His name is Aurm, and he is a local shopkeeper from Nepal who sells traditional flutes to tourists.  Don’t tell him that though.  He hates being labeled as a “tourist hassle.”  

In fact, Aurm hates most things.  The ever rising pollution and symphony of horns from constant traffic, people who don’t care to hear his music that he actually writes and cares about, McLeod Ganj and his situation in life in general, the visa process, his ex wife, the litter in abundance, and particularly books and movies, which he sees as necessary for stupid people who need to have “a way to dumb down reality.”  From there he will motion to the street, “See this?  You have all the drama you’ll ever need right here.”  

There is something savory about his bitterness—a man better than his circumstances who is keenly aware of it.  Aurm seems nothing short of brilliant.  He speaks ten languages, writes music inspired by peoples voices, carves his own flutes, has great one liners, and enjoys reading palms in his spare time.

This is what mine says.  Apparently.

The first thing he noted was a freckle on my right palm.  “You will inherit a fortune,” he says.  I laughed.  I’d love to know where that is coming from, because I don’t foresee it.

“You are like water.”

“Like what?”

“Water.  Your feelings are like water.  Always on the move.  Restless and sneaky, going from one place and relationship to the next whenever it gets difficult.”

“Hmm… okay.  Go on.”

To Do or Not to Do

Hamlet was an idiot.  To be or not to be is a worthless question.  But to do or not to do?  Now that is really something.

               

 I’m a Mormon.  Maybe you are too, but likely not (if you are, then never mind, it just means I’ve failed again at this whole “connect” thing). Whatever you are, there is a well known story floating about LDS primary rooms and Sunday school chapels about the origin of our best known song, “I am a Child of God.”  The original version was changed from “teach me all that I must be” to “all that I must do.”  Why? It is not about being (I think, therefore I am, right?—but don’t tell the Buddhists I said that).  It is about doing.

 I could do a lot of things right now.  I’m in India; almost as far away as humanly possible from the place I sometimes consider home.  Some people call that America.  I call it the United States.  

 I could tell you all day about who I am being right now—that is easy. I’m being a twenty something year old, very confused child of God (since I already brought it up), lured far away from the comfort of familiarity, plopped down on this wood framed bed in Dharamsala India wondering what I should be doing right now.

See, and already we are merging into the doing.  What am I doing?  What should I be doing?

I can tell you what I thought I was doing.  I thought I was coming here to do an awesome field study project which would give me material for a honors thesis which would get me into a great masters program which would get me some job that I can’t seem to figure out which would all add up into this great awesome life experience that could never have happened if I did not follow these steps exactly. 

 Sounds great, right?  I think so too.  So remind me one more time how I get off this bed, leave this room, and manage to do something that will contribute to that? 

 Once you venture out of the big abstract words like freedom, achievement, adventure, and experience, it gets a little less triumphant sounding.  I could go to the “Movies and Momos” activity that some of my group members are going to, but that would imply a risk of disappointment.  Last time I went it was canceled.  And remember I don’t speak a lick of Tibetan.  It also means walking (and by walking I mean hiking up the Himalayas, literally) to the other side of town.  This is also a risky activity, considering the main roads are more like half a lane but manage to fit two cars, random cows, and lots of pedestrians filling in whatever gaps are left. 

 Maybe that is not so much what I am afraid of.  Maybe I just love the terrible urine smell from the bathroom next door or the playful fly running into my computer screen like the first three hundred times never happened so much that I would never think of doing anything else.  Besides, the constant pain in my intestines from some unknown source(s) is the perfect excuse for bed rest.  Who would want to leave this place?

 It’s depression or something, isn’t it?  That is so simplified.  Loneliness, but closer to lost.  Maybe it is the boyfriend.  Or that feeling I used to get when I surfed and caught a wave wrong—that terrifying feeling of being flung under a vengeful wave like the inside of an off balanced washing machine, where up is down and down is up and you have no idea which way to start swimming before you run out of breath.  Hmm, sounds like suicide, but that would give Hamlet too much credit. 

To do or not to do?  Let’s go back to the being question.  At least I know the answer. 

Virginia