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secondhand saris, the sabziwalla, certain shock
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i'm taking some time.
i'm sitting here under the frenetically spinning fans of my perpetually too-warm apartment, taking deep dusty breaths in the sandstorm-ravaged air, trying to force just a little more oxygen into the lungs which have been squeezed too tightly in an abdomen which is crunched by the amazing dinner i just had.
i'm taking some time for paneer tikka masala and tandoori rotis and plain yogurt straight from my fingers off a red plastic plate, a dinner perhaps as delicious as each day's dinner, but one which i'm actually taking a moment to relish. i'm taking some time to close my eyes and savor it, feeling the paneer squish between my teeth, letting the rich array of spices permeate all my taste buds, gathering up all the sensory pleasure and routing it directly, unadulterated, to that tiny forgotten section of my brain where the chemicals governing satisfaction have long, too long, lain dormant.
i'm taking some time for lychees, one of those unintentional purchases which are so blessedly common along busy indian market streets at 7 o'clock in the evening, that dusky hour when all the vendors are out in their most aggressive salesmanship, nudging their rickety wooden carts piled high with multicolored produce ever further out into the middle of the road to ensure that unwitting potential customers will be forced to stop and consider buying. just so, amidst a flurry of other errands, i was physically stopped by someone's cart, almost brushing past him before eyeing the small mountain of the oblong little fruits piled atop. lychees are my new love affair, spiky and forbidding on the outside, miserably shackled to their dry, scratchy bundles of stems, but so tantalizingly juicy and sweet and pure once you get past that rough exterior. i'm sitting on the cot-cum-couch in my living room a couple hours later with a bundle of them, lovingly cutting through those ugly barbed facades with a fingernail, peeling away the world-weary calloused exterior before squeezing out the eyeball-like fruit (a trait which would be alarming were the eyeball itself not so unbelievably delicious) into my mouth, nibbling the flesh off the disproportionately large dark brown pit before spitting it into the little black-and-white espresso mug which previously housed my yogurt.
i'm taking some time for ginger lemon honey, my old love affair, that unabashedly contradictory miracle of beverages which will always remain an inextricable part of my memories from my first trip to india last fall, and in particular with many an amazing conversation with my accidental chicagoan friend josephine. gingerlemonhoney, the flavor of a cold windy night in rishikesh, wondering why christmas lights were blazing all around us in the garden of a guest house high above the rushing blue of the river ganges. it only just occurred to me last night, as i was sweating in the unusually humid air of a jodhpuri may evening while waiting to buy a bottle of water at a little grocery stand near my apartment, that i could actually manufacture this marvelous concoction in the sanctity of my own home. so now i'm taking some time, standing in bare feet on the smooth white marble of my kitchen, carefully skinning and julienning the plump 3-rupee hunk of ginger root, dropping it carefully into the rapidly boiling water on my silver gas stove, neatly bisecting two knoblike lychee-sized greenyellow lemons and squeezing them in, pouring a little honey into the bottom of a mod-looking lime green ceramic mug, just a little more - a little more - and catching the excess drop with my finger, which goes promptly in my mouth. now i'm back on the makeshift couch, my back against the dusty white wall, legs tucked up under me, smiling to myself as i sip at this stupendous phenomenon of a culinary invention - an item which is at once hot, sweet, sour, spicy, and drinkable - easily falling into the realm of modern world wonders.
i'm taking some time to read a book for sheer pleasure, something that i haven't done in about 6 months, since the last time i was in india, tucked safely away in one or another train racing across the subcontinent. eat, pray, love. it's a new york times bestseller, which is how i know it's for sheer pleasure. and it is absolutely intoxicating. i'm laughing out loud, and then laughing more out loud about the fact that i'm laughing out loud about something. i'm taking some time to be taken back to italy, back to rome, back to a life there that was as different from my life here in india as i am a different person than i was then, over 4 long years ago. it is a sensation that is both beautiful and heartbreaking, but in a way that makes me feel positive, and whole, and grateful for so many things in spite of where life has taken me in that time. i'm taking time to translate whole english passages into italian, seduced by the memory of a life lived in such a stunning language, passages which i speak out loud and accent with all the normal hand gestures and facial expressions and laughing at the absurdity of it, just for the pleasure of sinking back into that girl, that place, that time that was.
i'm taking some time not to think about now. to forget, if just for a little while, about all the stress and anxiety and simple occupation that has kept me pinned firmly to my consciousness for the past few weeks. the almost four months since my arrival in india have been marked by a frantic racing, a pushing ahead, the constant sensation of always being just a half step behind, only able to keep up, never able to quite get a grip on the present. each new occurrence more energy-consuming than the last, with the thought of tomorrow looming larger and larger in my mind. for the first time in all my travels, i'm experiencing fairly persistent health problems, and i can feel my physical presence wavering, stumbling, recovering, and collapsing again almost faster than i can pull it back up again through days and nights with highs well up into the 100s. so i'm taking some time to take it easy, to remind myself that i don't need to have all the answers, that nothing will fall apart if i take all day today, sunday, technically but not frequently practically my day off, and do nothing but read and eat lychees and lie half-naked under my living room fan while the hot dust-streaked breeze slips across between the open windows of my 4th-story apartment.
i'm taking some time to be alone in a nation of over 1 billion people, to remove myself from the constant shadow of curious eyes, innocent though they may be. some time to remind myself that there is still a place to withdraw to, a place of sanctuary and peace which is not necessarily a physical location. i'm taking some time to remind myself that i am this place, and that no matter what sandstorm is raging outside, i know where i've been, what i've come through, who i am, and it's not too too far from who i want to be.
......
it would be idiotic to attempt a comprehensive survey of the pieces of india that i've gathered over the last 4 months. everyone in the world knows that the complexity and overstimulation of india is incapturable and, perhaps for this very reason, overly yet persistently inadequately documented.
here's what i can say about india that's obvious but time-stoppingly true: it's teaching me so, so many things. every day is a startling new lesson in culture, patience, language, understanding, and, not least of all, humility. by now i've certainly crossed the threshold from the realm of traveler into that of resident, a move which is akin to leaving the anticipation of an interesting, cluttered, inviting, and naked-lightbulb-lit doorstep of a giant eccentric-looking mansion and entering into total darkness within. this entrance has yielded all kinds of interesting, bizarre, frustrating, and often rewarding new surprises, but i'm forever bumping into odd-shaped little objects in the darkness, skinning my shin and cursing out loud, starting in panic as something creaks or whispers behind me, shuddering at the feeling of something hairy darting across my bare foot. every so often, though, a little candle flickers in the darkness and fills me with warmth, gratitude, and happiness to be part of this place.
today i'm paying my rent for the 3rd month in my apartment, a beautifully-designed if shoddily-constructed marble-floored 4th story space that i am in love with. it's teaching me the value of living space. last night, flipping out the light, opening wide all the 5 windows on adjacent walls in the little square bedroom, stretching myself out on the light-blue solo sheet spread across my single simple bed, i almost whispered a prayer of gratitude for the miracle that is a cross-breeze in the middle of an un-air-conditioned desert night. in spite of my exhaustion, i propped myself up against the wall of my consciousness, smiling and taking deep breaths through my nose, contorting my body into a comfortable stretch, and appreciating more than anything the beauty of finally removing the pressure and heat from the physique after a long sweaty day.
among the more dramatic shifts in mentality i've experienced over the past 4 months is the complete re-examination of what is meant by "culture shock." such a vague ridiculous term. what does it take for an individual to become stunned, incapacitated, astonished, perhaps even traumatized by total immersion into a very different culture? as always, the folly of confidence had me blindsided upon arrival in india. having already lived and worked on 3 continents, settling into life on the 4th hardly seemed like an overwhelming assignment. ah, yes. if only i had allowed just a glimmer of reason in my consciousness to shine through and shout, "india is neither america, nor italy, nor kenya, you idiot!" eventually this realization, simple yet elusive as it seemed to be, did break through, around the usual time when life in a new place shifts from that of a traveler to that of a resident. and against all expectations, it truly shocked me.
culture shock for me manifests itself in certain small, seemingly banal moments of everyday life. all those little things about this new place that were initially novel, amusing, or even charming - the moaning, constant call of the sabziwallah (vegetable vendor - see below), making his rounds through the neighborhood, pushing his cart along dutifully as every morning...the veering homicidal antics of the autorickshaw drivers negotiating their way through tight sewer-lined alleyways...the screeching of traffic stopping for a self-assured, attitude-laden cow who has decided arbitrarily to lie down in the middle of the highway - these things suddenly start to lose their entertainment value, the glimmer fades, they even start to become irritating, like little obstacles that have been thrown up in the middle of a busy day simply, it seems, to make your work more difficult. the things that were initially irritating - the unabashed staring by every single person who catches sight of your freakishly light complexion on the street...the stacks of 3 teenage boys pressed together on a single motorcycle veering within inches of you to scream "HELLO GORI!" ("hello white girl!") in your ear...the impossibility of getting a broken lock or a hole in the wall fixed within 6 weeks of having reported the problem, if ever - these things now become almost unbearable. at the height of a bout of culture shock, leaving my house is like stepping out into a battle zone, a battle where i'm fighting only against myself with anxiety and incomprehension, wearing my weary body down further each time i note with irritation another person staring with a laser-beam intensity that seems to have been switched from "stun" to "kill," another rickshaw driver who appears intent on running down some innocent family of four, another set of teenage boys who seem to have no other purpose in life than cruising round in their happy threesome seeking out single foreign women to harass.
but that's just the culture shock talking. and without fail, at some unexpected point, it always abates.
things i love about life in india: the juicewallah, at whose description i will eventually duly arrive, but not without first pointing out another love of mine - the hindi term "wallah," a generic term meant to mean "the one who/that/which..." that can be applied to almost anything, i.e. doodwallah ("dood" = milk, so the milkman), lalwallah ("lal" = red, so the red one), sabziwallah ("sabzi" = vegetable, so the vegetable vendor), and so forth. so the juicewallah, or rather my favorite juicewallah, stands behind a counter from early morning til late night in a space approximately the size of a vertical coffin about 2 blocks from my apartment building. he has the slight shadow of a unibrow between his smiling eyes and a face so frankly open and likeable that i knew immediately, the first time i shuffled up the stone steps to his little juice niche 2 months back, that he would be indeed become my favorite juicewallah. four cylindrical jars stand proudly on the built-up wooden display in front of his standing space, displaying the fresh fruits and vegetables of the day. when i first started frequenting his stand, i was greeted each day by the fleshy orange-white outsides of little peeled clementines jumbled up together in jar 1, the glistening taut green spheres of hundreds of grapes in jar 2, the big bulbous pale yellow forms of peeled mousambi (sweet limes) in jar 3, and usually the beady little wine colored seeds of pomegranate squeezed tartly together in jar 4. with the changing of the season, those four old friends have slowly been replaced by new favorites - the oblong naked freckled bodies of pineapples in one jar, another holding the mellow pink seed-studded slices of watermelon (the juice of which, i was shocked the first time to discover, is typically served with salt and pepper). a typical day is hardly complete without a trip to the juicewallah, who always greets me with a friendly smile as he picks up his blender in anticipation of my order. lately i'm on a pomegranate kick. he keeps a giant sack of pomegranate seeds (the harvesting of which i am absolutely certain was done under less-than-hygienic conditions, but it's worth it) in the giant deep freezer behind him (forming one wall of his coffin), which he scoops out with scientific accuracy using his bare hands, the hair on the backs of which could form an impressive toupee. he tosses them in the blender, runs a few watts of electricity through the sucker, then slocks the whole thing into a slightly cloudy-looking grease-smudged glass that's been waiting there on the counter just for me. the result is a freezing cold milky pink beverage that could very well have been thrust down onto the earth by the gods themselves, and i have to remove the straw and drink in little sips from the glass in order to keep myself from downing it in one giant slurp. after all, it's the most expensive thing on the menu at 30 rupees ($.75) for a large glass, the same price as my daily lunch of parathas (stuffed chapati-like things) and yogurt. the juicewallah will even make my juice to-go on request, tossing it into a plastic cup covered with cellophane and a rubber band and then chucked into a polyethylene bag filled with crushed ice, which remains frozen for approximately 1.8 seconds in the desert heat as i hustle to make it home.
something else i love about india: the secondhand sari vendors in the clock tower market of the old city. sometimes on sundays smita and i indulge ourselves by jumping in an autorickshaw and making our way to the crazy, chaotic, psychedelic city center in the afternoon heat, beelining our way through the fruit and vegetable stands, the little displays of pots and pans and buckets, the slick young guys touting bootleg bollywood DVDs, straight to the half-dozen or so staid-looking women sitting with their legs pretzeled up around them behind neatly-stacked rows of secondhand saris laid out on a blanket. they always keep their poker faces on when they see us coming, but usually the initial realization ("it's them!") that flickers in their eyes as we approach is hard to miss. we must be their best customers. for our part, we always saunter up casually, greeting them with even-toned "namastes," nonchalantly eyeing their wares with an all-too-calculated air of indifference, carefully restraining ourselves from jumping at the first gorgeous silk piece that catches our eye. slowly laying my hand down on a divine cerulean silk piece, unfolding just the outer layer to expose the paloo, the long specially-ornamented piece that dangles down over the left shoulder, i carelessly ask, "yeh kitna hai?" ("how much is this one?"). "ek sau rupee" ("a hundred rupees"), comes her usual reply. as per our normal routine with these same women, smita makes a little clucking sound and i pretend to forget all about the blue one. with faux boredom i point instead to a butter yellow fold near the back. "aur yehwallah?" ("and that one?" - good example of how "wallah" becomes a daily vocabulary star). "ek sau rupee." another cluck from smita. i start craning my neck in a display of exaggerated interest in her neighboring competitors' saris. "thik hai, assi," ("okay, eighty,") she chirps. "nahi, assi donon," ("no, eighty for both,") smita chimes in. eventually after some good-natured clucking from both sides, we agree on a hundred for both, which makes this sari sale exactly the same as the last 13 times that smita and i have come here, in which we almost without fail buy whatever sari we end up buying for 50 rupees ($1.25). still, the routine of the whole exchange is an important part of the overall process, and none of us would dream of changing it ("hello ladies, i know that you must be having a very busy day here in the clock tower market, and i myself have a lot of sitting here calling out to potential customers to do, and i would be loth to waste either my or your time, so i'm just going to go ahead and quote you 50 rupees for these saris instead of either one of us bothering with the hassle of the negotiation. what do you think?"). it's just not india. nor would i want it to be.
we buy these saris for a variety of different reasons. some are just intoxicatingly beautiful silk of colors so rich you cannot believe that they can possibly be captured on a fabric so delicate, pinks and blues and yellows and greens, with intricate silver handwoven brocade that calls to mind the corridors and passageways of eternal mazes of flowers. others look like they would make pretty sweet apartment curtains, although to date i've only been bothered to sit down and hand-sew one set of them (a sky blue adorned with flowers and peacocks, which isn't nearly as tacky as it sounds, and flutters nicely under the fan in my living room). others, usually nice cotton ones still in good condition (no rips, holes, or bloodstains - i'm not kidding), we actually wear (after a thorough hand-washing up on my sunny balcony, of course). since lately i've fallen into the habit of wearing saris like they're going out of style (which believe me, they are definitely not), i'm always up for another nice light one that will swath me through another mindnumbingly hot desert day.
if we're planning on wearing whatever we buy, though, the purchase of the sari itself is only half the battle. as i discovered the first time i was trying to buy a new sari 3 hours before the wedding i was planning on wearing it to, sari-wearing is not such a flippant event. for those who are not regular sari-wearers, i shall explain. the sari is actually a 3-piece deal. the sari itself is a length of fabric somewhere around 6 meters long, with the 6th meter constituting the paloo i described earlier. after buying a new sari, one must purchase a fall, a length of fabric about 5 inches wide and 4 feet long and of the same color as the sari, to be sewn into the opposite end as the paloo, weighting the bottom of the sari so that it doesn't fly up while walking. underneath the sari, aside from the regular undergarments one would wear under any outfit, there is also a petticoat, a long cotton skirt with a drawstring waist that matches the color of the sari, and finally a blouse, the little short-sleeved shirt that closes shut with a series of hooks down the front and reaches just below the bustline, exposing the entire midriff and lower back. the blouse is also the same color as the sari, if not made from the same material (more expensive new saris come with the blouse material included so that you get a perfect match). the sari is wrapped around the waist once, tucked into the petticoat all the way round, pleated 8 or 12 times with the ends of the pleats tucked into the waistband, and the remaining piece is wrapped up around the waist and thrown over the shoulder, often with a pin in the blouse to keep the paloo in place.
it's easy enough to find a ready-made petticoat which will match the sari, but the blouse is a whole different story. first you have to find a matching center that has an array of colored fabrics that you can choose from for a color which will match the sari. then you buy that material and take it somewhere else to a tailor (neither sari shops nor matching centers actually have tailors). here you drop it off, describe the type of blouse that you want (deep-necked, belted, shorter sleeves, etc...a vast variety of options that mean a difference of perhaps one or two inches of fabric in the overall design of a blouse), he takes your measurements, and then you wait anywhere from a week to a month until the tailor feels like giving it to you, which is never, ever, don't even dream it, on the day that he originally told you it would be, but generally after your 3rd or 4th exasperated visit to pick it up. let it be testament to my ignorance of indian culture that the first time i was picking up a set of blouses from my tailor, i actually had the audacity to ask on my 4th disappointing visit to the tailor's shop (over a week after they were supposed to be ready) if he was going to give me a discount for the delay. smita, standing next to me, looked mortified. the tailor, a stout little man in his 50s with a greying swatch of hair and a no-nonsense crease between his eyes, stared at me blankly for about a quarter second, sniffed, and then went right back to cutting the length of fabric that was in front of him. nowadays, like any other sane woman residing in india who is in need of a sari blouse, i wait until at least 4 days after the date when the blouse is supposed to be ready for pick-up, and then only if i have other business in the tailor's neighborhood do i swing by and ask if it's ready, so that when i'm told with remorseless certainty that it is not, i don't feel too bad about having gone out of my way. luckily my favorite tailor is situated right next to a place that serves amazing sweet lassis (that mindblowingly delicious yogurt drink that is one of india's many culinary miracles) in squat little terracotta cups that i get to take home, so it's never a big loss when the blouses aren't ready. i think the routine itself is what i love about this aspect of india. i really do love it. and as a result i have a gratifying collection of little terracotta cups accumulating in my apartment (right next to an ever-growing pile of second-hand saris).
another classic indian love is the chai. yes, everyone loves the chai. few travelers to india get away without becoming smitten by the taste, the custom, and the very culture that is indian chai. i love the utter accessibility of it, the universality of it, the way that anyone, and i mean anyone, will stop what they're doing right this second for a tiny cup of strong, sweet, spiced chai. i wouldn't doubt that there's a chaiwallah who makes his mid-morning and afternoon rounds through operating rooms in major indian hospitals, peddling as always with that unique only-in-india dying-man's last sound call of "CHAIIIIII!", refreshing the dry lips and dull minds of the exhausted doctors as they roll up their bloody sleeves and pause in the middle of a grueling 11-hour open heart surgery for a spot of chai. it's just that good. there's something else about the chai that i love, although i suppose it's more a part of indian culture than anything. i love how it's impossible to enter someone's house, for any length of time, without being offered a cup of chai and usually a delectable array of accompanying snacks in little glass bowls (which, if i'm lucky, often include rasgulla, spongy little spheres of paneer that have been soaked in rosewater sugar syrup - they are violently delicious). even as your insistent protests of having to make your next appointment or having just five minutes ago taken chai are flying at your eager host, she or he is on his way to the kitchen, or at least calling out to a servant to put the chai on the stove. like many things, this aspect of indian culture initially seemed like an impediment to productivity ("how will i ever make all these appointments if i have to take chai at every stop?"). not one that i was unfamiliar with, since kenyans have adopted the same custom, but nevertheless an extra small chunk of time that would have to be carved out for each house or office visit i made. man, talk about a cultural adjustment that required very little sacrifice on my part whatsoever. it's all i can do now to stop myself making extra house visits just to get at some more chai. i'm getting ever more suspicious that this chai is laced with something less than wholesome and highly chemically addictive. and aside from the obvious deliciousness of the chai and snacks themselves, that extra little sliver of time can make a great deal of difference in the ultimate relationship between myself and host, or at least in my understanding of it.
a tiny cup of chai in hand is like a magic talisman that allows one to sink a little deeper into this place that is at once so irritating and captivating. and so, hoping to be able to hold this power over my own unsuspecting house guests, i giddily rushed to the corner shop and purchased my own christening batch of tea leaves, spices, powdered milk, and sugar for my initiation into indian domestic life. my first opportunity to bedazzle a group of house guests with my effortless chaimaking abilities came in late april, during the orientation of our first group of interns. i had bought the milk from a local doodwallah (nice, right?) just about an hour before, and it was sitting in the little styrofoam box in my kitchen that i like to pretend actually keeps things cool in the 4th-story space that more closely resembles an oven (at around 115F each day) than a living space, an especially optimistic belief since i never bother purchasing ice to put in it. after all 7 people had filed into my apartment, i carefully poured the milk into the pot on the lit gas burner, breathless with excitement, and waited for my moment of chaimaking fame to arrive in all its blinding glory. the milk started to look a little funny. i ignored it. smita walked over, looked in the pot, and declared, "there's something wrong with the milk." i took another look. the formerly innocent-looking white chunks floating on the surface had grown into rather uninnocent looking giant gobs of gooey disgustingness. "no there's not!", i insisted, "it always does that!" (yes, i literally said those words. that's how bad the denial was). smita looked at me sympathetically, but firmly, and turned off the gas stove. our friend and host organization founder govind rushed over to see what all the commotion was about. "not to worry!", he exclaimed, "we can make paneer!" i glared at him with dubious melancholy. he ignored it. "do you have a scarf?" so instead of enjoying world-class chai that day, we did, in fact, make unfermented cheese with the help of a scarf. which no one ate.
since then my chaimaking skills have indeed improved, but the number of unexpected guests who drop into my place for a stunningly delicious hot cup hasn't exactly skyrocketed. more often than not, it's smita who falls victim to my merciless chai-touting - "just come in! for one second! i'll make you chai!" i shout down the stairs, where she's in her own apartment, trying to get ready for work. she usually delays it for as long as she can, then eventually trucks up the stairs with a sigh, smiling as she kicks off her shoes and enters, responding to my tenacious offers with the typical indian response, "well, only if you're already making some..."
so many things to love about india. so many things. it's shocking.
Latest Comments (4)
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woogidy (reply)
May 28, 2008 14:58 EST by johnslangford
as to the chai, i feel the same way about cane syrup on pancakes. in the future, i'll call out to visitors--oh, please, come in, i'm just making pancakes with cane syrup!!
you sound well-acclimated. Love D
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You're a wonderful writer (reply)
May 27, 2008 22:32 EST by carolveam
Lillian, it's delightful to read your stories. You help me appreciate the other the cultures...and your joys and challenges. Blessings and prayers, Carol Marsh
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thank you (reply)
May 27, 2008 14:14 EST by apogipinoy
Thank you Lillian for sharing your thoughts...un-edited you say??? I've always had a love for raw thought if anything for the sole purpose of putting on the eyes of the author...the actions, pictures, feelings...all placed in the order that they need to be and bring me that much closer to seeing what you see.
I am a fan of chai, and would love to sample your brew one day. I am afraid to ... show all
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dood! (reply)
May 26, 2008 14:14 EST by johnlangford
Absolutely breathtaking. This makes me feel like I'm there. I cannot believe that ANYTHING that anyone could possibly write could make me want to go back to India right now, but you've somehow succeeded in doing just that. Beautiful descriptions of everything. Also very nice to hear about your day to day life at a time when you're otherwise consumed by the demands of your work. Hope all is well, T... show all
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| 2. | secondhand saris, the sabziwalla, certain shock - Jodhpur, India May 26, 2008 (  4 ) |
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