Winter to winter

Greetings once again from India.  And apologies to those of you who were not able to get access to this blog with the address I sent earlier.  At this point, I think either bruceinindia.blogspot.com or bruceinindia.blogspot.in will work.  No "@"'s!

For local people here in South India, this is "winter."  Yet, in Chennai, it's been in the mid-80's daily, with some humidity.  The experience of weather seems relative; we see some folks with wool hats pulled down over their ears!  But when summer comes, the wet, hot monsoon season, I imagine the weather here now does seem like winter.  In any event, for those of us refugees from a cold Minnesota winter, it's been a welcome burst of summer.  We spent part of one afternoon at the beach just south of Chennai, on the Bay of Bengal.  A few local people were swimming, but most, like the three ladies in the photo below, were content to just enjoy the crashing waves and a day away.

Our group of 20 students seems to be doing well.  For most, India is new, and Dana (the psychology professor who organized the course) has provided a number of ways for us to experience the culture and people.  A key early one has been our contact with faculty and students at Madras Christian College, noted in the first post.  As part of our program with them, we spent a day at a Dalit village (Dalits were formerly referred to as "untouchables," the group below even the lowest of the social castes in India).

That day was the first day of Pongal, or the harvest festival in Southern India.  This included making a special food in terra cotta cooking pots over outdoor fires, a mixture of the recent rice and sugar cane harvests with a few other spices, to make a tasty meal.  A number of such pots are set out to cook at the same time as the village gathers, and they are let to boil over for a moment to symbolize the bounty of the harvest (our pots are overflowing).  In the photo below, we see some of the women around the pongal pots, one of whom is stirring it.  We were included in a brief Hindu ceremony afterwards, and then given a portion of the new harvest food to eat (anything that's been freshly cooked is safe to eat, but we avoid unknown street foods, for example).

After these ceremonial aspects, we shared in some of the music and games (some drumming and dancing--I was invited up to help drum but was well outclassed by the older boys, but some of our women students were active dancers).  One of the more dramatic games included small teams of young men trying to tag and capture one another, hoping to successfully throw the person sought to the ground (see photo below).

Afterwards we adjourned to a house where women who are involved in the various programs seeking to improve village life spoke of what they do in the areas of education and health (these programs are part of social justice outreach from the college) (the woman in the green sari, photo above, as one of the leaders, and helped arrange our visit).  It was inspiring to see some of their efforts, and we were also fed more of the festival food, on banana leaves, most of us sitting on the floor (except for some of us older folks, such as myself, whom local people see as an elder, who were encouraged to take one of the few seats).  A tasty bit of fish curry was added.  Their welcome and their hospitality were humbling.

Some of our students were uncomfortable, as this was a poor village and we were relatively affluent Americans.  How do we know what we're doing here?  Our students want to be sensitive and respectful of the culture, and its rules and etiquette, but we're not always certain we know what they are.  Yet we experienced what is sometimes called an "extravagant welcome."  And no one else would usually visit a Dalit village (nor would ordinary American tourists), nor perhaps accept food from their hands (whose touch was once considered to make that food ritually impure), or hold their babies.  And the kids found our visit exciting, asking our names and we theirs in turn, shaking our hands.  And we were invited and expected.  But are these the kinds of rationalizations it's easy to make when you're having a good time?  And, too, we come from a society ourselves in which welcoming the stranger has a ragged history.  Now we, in a small way, are "strangers in a strange land," yet also privileged ones, uncertain what that means.

I was grateful that some of our students were asking these kinds of questions, as the kind of interaction we hope for between us (our group) and local people of varying genders and classes is always complicated and needs a sensitivity that takes time and care to develop.  On the one hand, there's no differences between our and their (local villagers) ability to dream, to take small pleasures, to love one another, and to find purpose in something larger than ourselves.  Yet we do differ in important ways, in social class, comforts, language, safety, health, color, access to safe water, and education.  We have privileges of which we are usually unaware, or take for granted.  We are trying to learn, to find a way through to our common humanity in situations in which that humanity has sometimes been denied--in this situation, particularly for Dalits.

I'll conclude for now.  Stay tuned for more!  Namaste (see last photo below).  Bruce