Do Lucknow

From: Julia Dakin
Subject: my thanksgiving
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:25:19 -0800 (PST)

Hi Rose!
I forgot it was thanksgiving but its just as well since everybody was out of the house and I was experimenting with sourdough pancakes, which are pretty good. It is snowing here, but with each hour it snows I get worried because it means the cows will be standing at the gate waiting to come home and eat silage. This whole morning I was getting frustrated with them because they keep running back down the hill to the gate if I ignore them for a minute while I’m getting other cows. They still have to dig in snow hopefully for another 6 weeks, just like every other year, but they don’t agree that should happen. I’m trying really hard to be patient but sometimes I just hate cows. Other than that I’m having a really great time riding around in the cold and snow and wondering why I love this job so much. I really do love it. Maybe Jon will discover how fun it is to be a cowboy and I’ll be able to keep coming up here in the winter sometimes. Now I gave you a story, you have to write another piece in your blog.
Love, Julia

Lucknow is at the top of the list of places that need a phonebook and mapquest, but instead information flows almost only through personal networks or not at all. A lot of streets don’t have names or signs. You know where you’re going first by the name of the neighborhood, then by the nearest landmark, then by asking people if they know the family. And this for a city of 3 million! So it’s a good thing Geeti’s cousins live here. They got us a yoga teacher, a Kathak teacher, two motorcycles, wireless internet and perfect chocolate cake. In exchange Geeti was expected to be a good Desi daughter, and several culture shocks followed. They’re mostly smoothed over now. There’s a bit of the southern sweeping under the rug; Geeti’s triple heritage. The other problem with extensive personal networks is that people recognize you and report on your whereabouts to each other, which would be fine if it weren’t such a shocking taboo to be seen out at night. (Geeti’s blog: link)

Other culture shock notes: I think it is terrifyingly lonely to have weddings where the bride and groom are on separate floors, or in separate rooms, or separate in any way. I like a lot of things about Islam in South Asia, but not that. In Hindu weddings the bride and groom are literally tied together, which is better.

And cultural crossovers: A lot of Desi people don’t eat fish and milk together, and Sadaf (US-Pakistan-Gujrat-5th generation Muslim) and Rohish (US-Fiji-Rajasthan-Hindu) agreed it was borrowed from Jewish Kosherness. Tuna melts can be an exception. I would love a tuna melt right now.

I went to Delhi last week with Sadaf for a Sufi saint death anniversary (the Urs of Amir Khusrao) at the Nizamuddin Dargah. We stayed at Mridula and Nirinder Kumar’s apartment in R.K. Puram. They were so sweet to us; they didn’t even mind when we came home at 1:30 in the morning one night, and 3:30 am the next night, and then had to catch a 6 am train. The whole three-day affair made me think Sufis must sleep during the day. Sadaf will say more about it on her blog link, I’m sure, since she is the Sufi and got tight with the Qawals in the wee hours of the mornings. I’ll just say that it was a treasure and that I feel blessed to have had access to it through Chris, the Fulbright guy studying that Dargah, and Sadaf.

We also had dinner with Robyn, her mother the ex CIA operator who now raises horses in Wyoming, and Ravi Satkalmi, who is working on a research project about returned NRIs in the Indian central government. We had such an American conversation (civil society, rights, accountability, attitudes of empowerment), sitting in Robyn’s beautiful house, drinking wine. It was my first glass in three months. We talked about Sami Al Arian, whose trial in Florida just ended. John is writing a story about the trial for the Chronicle, and Sadaf knows Sami’s daughter, so it was a topic close to our hearts. After dinner we went back to the Dargah, criss-crossing extremes of a large city’s physical and social geography.

Three more things: two thanksgivings, and a meeting. Our first thanksgiving was at Nathan’s place out at the Army Cantonment. Our teachers and my friend Bhavna came (the one with the 7 am curfew, but dinner was at 3, so it was ok) and we ate chicken masala, rajma, biriani, aloo and puris in the garden. It was a nice party, but I had to keep reminding myself that it was thanksgiving. So we decided to have another one at home around our big old round table. On Saturday I got the ingredients for salad, mashed potatoes, candied carrots, pearled onions, and applesauce. I cut my finger so Sadaf had to do everything under my hovering bleeding presence, and Brian made garlic bread, and we ordered a chicken. We had ice cream and applesauce for dessert. It reminded me of all my Saturday Thanksgivings at the Paasche farm in upstate NY, without the snow or babies. Before that, though, I met two other Americans in Lucknow. They’re married and have three kids and remind me of Heather and Andy Jennings. They’ll be here for three years; I’m not sure doing what; I’m not sure if they trust me enough to tell me. I did contact them through their website ‘Lucknow for Jesus,’ after all. They were lovely, solid people.

And one more thing: a horse race. The horses raced past. It was a much classier affair than Golden Downs in Berkeley, which has 20 races a day and run-down bleachers. These horses ran on grass. There were three races all day, with so much anticipation for each one. The track was so big I couldn’t see the start. It wasn’t crowded because only people with cars could make it out there. I’m thinking I need a car.

Tomorrow is the start of a new week. 7 hours of classes each day make the weeks go by so quickly, and then I’ll be a week closer to seeing John.

I forgot… this is a picture of the pumpkin with a diwali candle lighting it up:

and our new friends on the porch:

We had a halloween party that lasted till 2:30 am where, amazingly, people came in costume, actually a lot of alcohol was consumed, and we danced. Considering we know 3 people outside of the institute network, and one of them has a 7pm curfew, and 3 people in our 5 person house don’t drink, it was amazing.

The group of friends that we tapped into remind me of Deep Springers, but they’ve known each other longer, and there are more non-girlfriend girls. They know each other from La Martiniere (“La Marts”), which is the k-12 school designed by a crazy Frenchmen with a large budget and good aesthetic sense. So we had a skeleton (Anshul), a couple vampires (Siddartha), a bunch of Sinisters (Saim et al), a Gandhi/ghost (Brian), a gypsy princess (Sadaf) and a train porter (me). It was all of our guests’ first Halloween party, but at midnight everyone went around wishing each other happy Diwali. So it was a Diwali party too.

Diwali and Eid fell in the same week this year. They both last several days and involve staying up late, visiting lots of people and eating tons of food. I had 17 servings of seveya on Eid, a milky pasta sweet thing. It’s been such an intense week of celebrating that now I’m sick in bed. I even ate a sheher tukra, ‘double roti ka mita,’ which is a slice of bread fried in ghi, twice, and then soaked in thick sugar syrup. It has a bright orange color and looks like it appeals to the basest hunger instincts, which it does, because people eat it to break their fasts.

Wearing a helmet to protect myself from the Diwali fireworks. Safety first.

In Lucknow it seems to me that fasting for God is optional but eating for God isn’t. Every Muslim sits down for Iftar, the first evening food, whether or not they spent the day hungry. The day my camera got stolen I was in Aminabad, a Muslim neighborhood, and it was getting towards sunset. The streets were packed and blaring traffic was moving the speed of a slow walk. Snack vendors had expanded their area and were frantically seating people and serving little plates of fried snacks and fruit. No one was eating; the people sitting with food in their laps were quietly, blankly, waiting. The snack walla’s urgency extended to everyone who might conceivably be Muslim, and as I tried to wend my way through to the sidewalk to get my locked bike, he motioned to sit down and thrust a plate of food in my hands. I refused and kept going, pointing towards my bike. I got to it, unlocked it, and started untangling the other bikes and motorcycles and cycle rickshaws, when the Namaz sounded. The people seated started eating. For those several seconds while the sound of the Namaz thanking god floated over the intersection, the traffic stopped: no pushing, no horns, no cutting, no crossing. I stood and looked back at the people eating. I wanted to stare until I could figure out what was so arresting, for me and all the Hindus in the streets, about breaking the roza fast. It was like being in church, or at a wedding, or once when I went to a native american powow.

My new Eid dress, bought in Aminabad on chand raat, having survived two gropings in the crowd and a bull plowing through. I’m sitting with Sadaf’s friend Varda, which means rose in Arabic, at our 11th dinner.