The Sound of Green Bangles

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A couple things I feel I haven’t talked about:

People are very proud to be Indian and being from the same country is a uniting factor just like in the US; however, each state has its own identity that might even override their patriotism. More people turn out for local level elections than national elections and an Indian person will always identify where they are from. Each state has its own dishes and traditions that people follow and make it very hard to generalize India. People in Maharashtra, the state I live in, especially are proud of where they are from. So the food I’m eating, the culture I’m experience, is Maharashtran. If I was in the South, where Hindi is abhorred and things are more liberal, or up north where the very poor live and traditions are very adhered to, I would be having a completely different experience.

I didn’t consider myself Americanized or westernized before I came here but my values are so Americanized and it might not even be a bad thing. I can adjust, mostly, to the differences in values here and values in the work place are more similar to everyday life. A reflection paper I wrote nicely summarizes this:

I can give you an example that demonstrates a cultural difference in values between the US and India in every area. My entire time here I’m relearning how to approach things and redefining my definitions of success and how to communicate and respect people. The hardest part has been working the corporate India which has more Westernized value and living life based on India’s values. There are obviously many places these values overlap but figuring out where they don’t is confusing and overwhelming. The biggest differences I’ve encountered are communication styles and gender roles. At work, I can be an empowered woman (and the organization completely advocates this for women in the community as well) but I still have to adhere to gender roles set by society. An example of this is my interaction with the opposite gender. When I walk down the street, it’s considered inappropriate to make eye contact with males around the same age. At work, most people are my age and it is appropriate to make eye contact and interact with them. The daily transition was difficult at first but I am slowly learning the boundaries that define my gender role in this society.

A Maharashtran tradition is for women to wear green bangles when they are married. Throughout the training in Goregaon with Sanjay, I would constantly here the sound of the green bangles clanking together. It’s a sound that will always stay with me and reminds me of so many things the SHG groups stand for- the independence, the unity of being women, the shown desire and ability to break out of gender roles- and really characterize my work and time spent with the women working with Chaitanya.

The past few weeks have been so great although few monumental moments. After my first field visit I went on three more. The first experience was frustrating because I knew the questions weren’t being translated correctly because I wasn’t receiving answers that even made sense. I honestly never thought the language barrier would be a problem because we could work through it (an American value at work). I became frustrated but knew I could overcome this and would have the questions (which had been translated into Marathi) translated back to me to make sure they were really asking what I wanted.

The second visit was quite successful. The meeting didn’t include all of the women of the group because a man in the village had passed away. The women that were there though were all coaxed by Rashmi, my partner, to answer questions and I received very positive results. I am really liking the structure that the trainings will be administered and don’t feel overwhelmed because they are little, little trainings aimed to help people. Most of the women expressed a desire for trainings and gave great reasons/obstacles that could be a problem in administering the training.

My final field visit wasn’t about my work but to watch another field worker administer a survey. I went to a great little village called Pargaon. Another girl from Washington, Roxana, through my program had frequently visited the village and everyone talked about her and showed me pictures. It made me realize what an impact my visits will make on a village after I leave. Seeing the survey administered was very helpful and although she didn’t receive positive results to her survey, it was good to see that the women were being frank and could clearly identify their needs in training. We ate really good food and the house we visited had the cutest little kittens! I wanted to play with them so badly but I could visually see fleas crawling on them so I resisted the urge. They made a dish called Shira which I had once previously. It’s hard to explain but it looks like cream of wheat and has a similar texture but is sweet. I had banana flavor before and this time I had cardamom. They have cardamom in many dishes and in chai and I love the flavor.

In Rajgurunagar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajgurunagar), I’ve just been doing daily work compiling the women’s responses and deciding how to write up the training, how it should be administered and to whom. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about India itself. If anyone is interested, and I won’t be offended if you aren’t because I know my blog posts constitute a lot of reading, but the book In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce is an amazing insight into the problems of India and things I am experiencing everyday. Being a foreigner, especially one as obvious as I, always puts you at a disadvantage of learning about the tough things about life in a country. People want you to have such a great impression of them that the hard stuff is glossed over and to dig deep you need lots of time for them to become acclimated. Three months is definitely not long enough to acclimate and receive the understanding of Indian economics and society as this book offers.

One disturbing thing I did learn about firsthand has to do with female infanticide. The girls I live with have chai regularly at older people’s houses as I mentioned earlier. After having chai with one woman (Punjabi Aunty) for awhile (this was my first time meeting her) she divulged that her daughter isn’t actually her own. We were promised to secrecy from telling her daughter because her daughter doesn’t know. Apparently there was a woman that lived next door to her that kept having daughters. She had five daughters which to some families still isn’t a good thing. Told to us by Punjabi Aunty, the woman personally killed two of her five daughters and had tied up and left the third child to die. Punjabi Aunty rescued that little girl because she had two sons and always wanted a girl, and now she’s a 12 years old happy, bubbling child. The woman apparently moved after the last attempt and is now pregnant with a boy. Sex determination is illegal I believe but a little “greasing the palm” can get a different result. I was blown away by this story. I still don’t really know how to reflect on it or how I feel besides horror, shock, awe and completely confused. It’s a completely different thing to read about tragedies and things like this happening then to see the results firsthand. I can’t imagine the social and family pressures a woman must feel to kill (strangle in fact) her own children or the loss she’ll feel her whole life.

Another interaction I had with Punjabi Aunty’s family brings a funny story and hopefully a smile after that grim tale. There is a temple on a nearby mountain that Hardeep and I wanted to see. Punjabi Aunty offered that her son who’s about 19 and daughter would take us to. On our day off, Saturday the 12th, we decided to take her up on the offer. Her son, daughter and son’s friend went with us. It was only about 20 minutes away and the most gorgeous view. We could see all of Rajgurunagar and the surrounding towns as well. We went to this a nearby peak where supposedly a ton of peacocks live but we learned they only come out in the morning and we were there in the evening. We had snack mix near the temple and it was nice to finally do some physical exercise.

Over the next few days Hardeep noticed Agi, a term used for women older than you that could be your grandmother, who lives behind our house was ignoring her. She decided to talk to the woman that lives with Agi because they are friends and see if anything is wrong. At first the woman told her house Agi has health problems and has had to cut all the stuff out of her diet that she likes and sometimes is cranky but she’ll talk to Agi. Right when Hardeep is leaving she says, “Can I tell you something?” In India, people don’t normally disclose things outright so although frustrating it is normal that the actual issue might only be shared after some cajoling. The woman asked if Hardeep and I had been to the mountain with Punjabi Aunty’s son and friend and when Hardeep said yes she disclosed that those boys are known as “bad news”. She used the word goonda which is a term for gangster but could only mean trouble maker in their case (you never know how much is the truth and how much is embellished). Apparently, Agi was mad at us for going up the mountain with those boys and we were being talked about by the whole neighborhood. The woman kept saying that we couldn’t have known but advised us to be careful who we hang out with.

I completely didn’t expect this and it makes me chuckle at all the social difficulties of being proper. I wouldn’t care if my name became tarnished as I’m leaving soon but I know it would reflect really poorly on Chaitanya and the other girls are here for a year so I can’t ignore the incident. It makes the fine line between being social and having to be a recluse move a little. I don’t want to stop interacting with the random people we meet but I know I must be ultra-sensitive and conservative about my actions. The problem is I can’t cross-check every person that I meet so that would leave refusing people’s offers to have tea instead. So instead I will take care and deal with unintended consequences.

I am writing this on the 21st of October, 1 month before I finish my internship at Chaitanya. The time has gone by so quickly, especially the last four weeks. I will be returning on December 11 to the states after some additional traveling after the internship. The past five days have been Diwali holiday so I haven’t had work. Diwali is similar to Christmas in the US with the special foods and time off work. I returned to Kanse, the village I visited on my home stay and my next blog entry will be dedicated entirely to that amazing experience.

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