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Published: March 4th 2007
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Today is the first very humid day in the city--the sky is grey, the sun is gone, and everything is sticky. Today is also the one month anniversary of my arrival in Chennai. It's hard to believe that after waking up here for (most of) twenty-eight days, I find myself living a pleasantly adjusted, if not very complicated, life. I go to work. I go to the gym. I ride the bus, and have figured out the rules of where I can stand (as a woman) and how I can pass my money to the fare collector when the bus is too packed to make my way through. I eat with my right hand, mixing rice with vegetables or broth and delivering it in pinches to my mouth. I've determined that the guava in Chennai are wonderful and I've (re)learned that the smell of pee everywhere isn't so bad once you've learned not to breath through your nose. At work the man at the canteen knows my lunch order: one mini-meals--a small pile of rice with little bowls of sambar, rasam and a vegetable dish all for the price of 5 Rs (around ten cents). And I think I've figured out
The metal-vessel man
riding his bike through the village and hawking his wares how not to get ripped off by the auto-wallahs.
There are two things that I find remarkable in the context of my one month anniversary. One is that, despite my tendency to wear such brazenly western things like jeans and long skirts, I've only had my butt grabbed once since I arrived. To anyone who hasn't been to North India this might seem like a strange observation (and one that I spend too much time talking about), but the differences in treatment of women have still not lost their novelty to me. When I lived in Banaras I quickly developed anxiety about being in crowded public places and learned to walk with my hands behind me, covering my bum. In Chennai I can squeeze myself onto a crowded bus and, even if I am pressed up against men on the edge of the women's section, not think twice about it. The one time I did have my butt grabbed was by an old woman in a raggedy sari. When I turned around and gave her a look like "WTF. You totally just touched my butt and you're an old woman" she just laughed--flashing her betel-stained gums at me--and waved
me off, telling me in her own way that this was not such a serious incident after all.
It is Sunday, so I find myself at Spencer's mall--the middle class mecca of Chennai. It's a bizarre place: a terribly designed maze of shops, ranging from the small chaat stand that looks like its been plucked off the streets of Kolkatta to the Nike store, where you can buy $30 quick-dry gym shorts. It's packed on the weekends and seems to especially attract large groups of boys and girls--not too different from the malls of America, except the average age here tends to be about 5-10 years higher. I spend much too much time (getting horribly lost) here as a result of the girls I hang out with (one of them comes here almost every day); but it is where the internet is, so I cannot complain too loudly.
Because it is Sunday I am getting ready for our weekly visit to Vellore tomorrow. If it is anything like our previous visits it will go something like this: I will arrive at the train station at the designated time of 6:45. This is fifteen minutes before either Rajamma or
Kitchen
The kitchen was also the entry way to this house where we interviewed the mother of a 20 year old TB patient. The woman's husband had died ten years earlier and though she only had six years of schooling she managed to work and save enough to send her two children to school and buy a pakka (sturdy) constructed house with four rooms and electricity. Muniyandi will show up, so I will sit awkwardly in our coach (trying not to notice the fact that most of my fellow travelers are staring at me) until they arrive. Once the train has left the sprawling city and picked up speed we'll have a picnic style breakfast. I will provide fruit or peanut-butter and jelly sandwhiches, which will probably cause lots of discussion because they are made on wheat bread, and Muniyandi and Rajamma have only ever seen white bread before. Muniyandi will buy us coffee and Rajamma will bring out a box of dates, which she has provided consistently since she discovered that I like them.
After two hours our train will pull up to Katpadi station, an unfortunately popular junction where dozens of people are trying to get off, a few more than a dozen are trying to get on, and all of them have too much luggage. This is where we get off, which usually involves being pushed from behind into the old woman who is standing in front of me and fighting the elbows and packages that come from every direction just to make sure I can get off before the minute is
up and the train starts moving again.
Our regular auto-driver Murali (who is extremely polite and calls me "sir" out of respect) will pick us up and take us to the Christian Medical College. We will find the lunch room, where Muniyandi and Rajamma will break out part two of breakfast: idli (steamed patties made from rice flour) and chutney. If I tell them I don't want any they will give me two. And if I tell them I want two they will give me four.
After meeting with folks at the CMC we will spend the late morning and then the late afternoon and early evening bumping around rural Vellore in an auto and trying to track down TB patients to interview. In the previous weeks I let the social workers go off and interview while I just hung around taking pictures of little kids. This week I will get to do some interviews in partnership with the social workers, who will translate for me, and I'm excited to be more directly involved.
Although we arrive in Vellore on Monday morning and leave Tuesday at noon, the trip is somehow exhausting. Last week, when I stepped
Meals at the camp
Eating at the TRC camp (where we stay in Vellore) is one of the most distinct experiences I've had in India in that I feel like nothing has been changed simply because I am there. We sit on the floor around a cluster of stainless steel pots containing the predictable rice, sambar, rasam and vegetable dish. Our arrangment is not a complete circle, however, as we are often positioned so that we can all face the TV and watch either replays of the day's cricket match or Tamil music videos while we mix our rice and vegetables with our right hands. We mix, we shovel, we burp and we slurp, all in accordance with standard middle-class eating practices here. If it is dinner and we've taken our baths after a long day in the field, the men will wear tank tops and lungis (floor-length pieces of wrap around cloth) and Rajamma will wear her mu-mu nightgown/house coat; I do my best to follow most of the rules of normalcy here but I will not go as far as getting a mu-mu. off the train at Chennai central station I was surprised by how pleased I was to be back in the city. The sea breeze was strong and kept the squalid train-station air moving fast enough that it even smelled pleasant and I was happy to be back in a city that I've started to know a little bit better.
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M.C.
non-member comment
I love reading your entries! You are such an amazing writer. I especially loved the part where you said that they give you two patties if you say you don't want any, and four if you say that you want two. Reading your entries makes me laugh out loud.