This afternoon around 5:30 I was sitting down for some tea with a few of the workers and teachers here at the vocational training center. Last night was the watchman's son's marriage party, and we were talking about it. I made some stupid joke about Gautam, one of the groundskeepers, and said something about him getting married.
"I had my marriage already," Gautam said.
"No you didn't," I said.
"Yes, I did," he said.
"Yes, he did," said Gamr, one of the drivers. "Eight years ago."
"What?" I said.
"It's true," said Gautam.
That's when my jaw dropped. I'd heard about child marriage still being practiced in some places around Gujarat, but I didn't realize anyone here had experienced it, or that it was being practiced in villages close to the center (Gautam lives just one or two villages away).
Gautam had been married at age 12, eight years ago. I asked how old his wife was now, expecting to hear that she was a year or two younger than him, but he said that she is 13, meaning she was married at age 5. They haven't seen each other since the wedding, and there are a few years left before the marriage is consummated. How many, I don't know, but I doubt it's more than 3.
Where is the line between inalienable cultural property and cultural deficiency? It must be somewhere. Is it here? Maybe.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Plastic chairs
About four or five months ago, I went to go talk to Martin Macwan, the founder and mentor of many Dalit organizations, and the de-facto director of the vocational training center. He was dictating a document the NGO's secretary, and was sitting on two cheap plastic chairs, one stacked upon the other. I don’t remember what question I had for Martin, but halfway into my sentence he suddenly realized there were no chairs for me to sit on. “Sorry,” he said, “I was being a capitalist. Here,” now standing up, “Take one and have a seat.”
Recently I’ve begun to question the morality of living the “American lifestyle” I had been accustomed to. If I really believe in equality—and make it more than just a word, applying it to my own life—it becomes more difficult for me to justify, for example, spending a few hundred dollars on a snowboarding weekend, when people I have met and become friends with make less money in a year. Put another way, how many chairs am I sitting on? How many chairs do I have in the bank or in my wallet? How many chairs did I blow in Japan on food, drinks, and cover charges? A donation of a few hundred dollars to an organization that knows how to use it properly can make a huge difference, in all kinds of ways. The difference can even be quantified in dollar amount: books purchased, inoculations delivered, children sent to school, etc. Does the amount of fun I would have snowboarding outweigh that difference? A voice inside my head tries to argue away that problem, saying that I already give enough money away, that I spend enough of my time “helping people”, and I’m allowed to splurge. But these days, when that voice starts its familiar argument, a Lauryn Hill lyric from the song “Lost Ones” comes into my head: “Every man wants to act like he’s exempt.”
I don’t think I can keep acting like I’m exempt. I’ve seen so much injustice here that I don’t know what to do with it. On a train to Pune a few months ago, a ten-year-old boy, shirtless and barefoot, was crawling on his hands on knees down the isle, sweeping the floor—strewn with plastic wrappers, and sticky with tea and spit—with a short broom. After he swept by each person’s feet, he held out a dirty hand in the hope that a Rupee or two would be dropped into it. Sitting in the seat across from mine was another boy, also about ten years old. But this one was totally fluent in English because his parents had enough money to send him to an English-medium school; maybe they even spoke in English to him at home, because they had also been to English-medium schools. In fifteen years he will be an engineer or successful businessman. And where will that other boy—the one who is on his knees, now crawling down the isle with the broom in his hand—where will he be? It just feels different when you’ve seen the injustice in front of you, when injustice itself is at your feet and on the seat next to you, talking to you, when you can see the sweat on its back.
When we talk about solidarity, what do we mean? That boy on the floor was probably from the Valmiki community, whose caste-bound duty is to clean other people’s filth. Here in Gujarat and around India, many Valmiki children are made to sit in the back of the classroom, to sit separately at mealtime, and to clean the school’s toilets. What would I do if I were in that situation? Can I honestly say that I would stay in school and face the constant humiliation? When the script is written before a life even begins—when you can almost know how the child of illiterate Valmiki parents will grow up, just as you can almost know how the child of wealthier forward-caste parents will grow up—you want to do something to change that script.
Being a native English-speaker and having a college education made me qualified to be an English teacher in Japan, salary about $30,000, tax-free. My key skill, if you can call it that, was being able to speak my own language in my own accent. I know plenty of other people who can speak their own language in their own accent. Instead of being rewarded, they are punished, held back from decent jobs because they don’t know English well enough. Can I really still believe that I deserve all these chairs I’ve got stashed away?
When I can see in black and white the ways in which society can systematically include and reward—and also exclude, humiliate, and subjugate—it’s harder to keep living as if I’m exempt.
I wrote this for an AJWS assignment on Passover. The question was:
At the same time as we are instructed to experience liberation, we are also instructed to remember the suffering as our own. Because of our personal experience as slaves, we are commanded to recognize and rectify injustice. “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garments in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt…therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment (Deut. 24:17-18).” In what ways have you witnessed injustice in your experience this year? Does living this experience make you more obligated to address those injustices and in what ways? In seeing injustice on a day to day basis, do you feel more or less obligated to address those issues?
Recently I’ve begun to question the morality of living the “American lifestyle” I had been accustomed to. If I really believe in equality—and make it more than just a word, applying it to my own life—it becomes more difficult for me to justify, for example, spending a few hundred dollars on a snowboarding weekend, when people I have met and become friends with make less money in a year. Put another way, how many chairs am I sitting on? How many chairs do I have in the bank or in my wallet? How many chairs did I blow in Japan on food, drinks, and cover charges? A donation of a few hundred dollars to an organization that knows how to use it properly can make a huge difference, in all kinds of ways. The difference can even be quantified in dollar amount: books purchased, inoculations delivered, children sent to school, etc. Does the amount of fun I would have snowboarding outweigh that difference? A voice inside my head tries to argue away that problem, saying that I already give enough money away, that I spend enough of my time “helping people”, and I’m allowed to splurge. But these days, when that voice starts its familiar argument, a Lauryn Hill lyric from the song “Lost Ones” comes into my head: “Every man wants to act like he’s exempt.”
I don’t think I can keep acting like I’m exempt. I’ve seen so much injustice here that I don’t know what to do with it. On a train to Pune a few months ago, a ten-year-old boy, shirtless and barefoot, was crawling on his hands on knees down the isle, sweeping the floor—strewn with plastic wrappers, and sticky with tea and spit—with a short broom. After he swept by each person’s feet, he held out a dirty hand in the hope that a Rupee or two would be dropped into it. Sitting in the seat across from mine was another boy, also about ten years old. But this one was totally fluent in English because his parents had enough money to send him to an English-medium school; maybe they even spoke in English to him at home, because they had also been to English-medium schools. In fifteen years he will be an engineer or successful businessman. And where will that other boy—the one who is on his knees, now crawling down the isle with the broom in his hand—where will he be? It just feels different when you’ve seen the injustice in front of you, when injustice itself is at your feet and on the seat next to you, talking to you, when you can see the sweat on its back.
When we talk about solidarity, what do we mean? That boy on the floor was probably from the Valmiki community, whose caste-bound duty is to clean other people’s filth. Here in Gujarat and around India, many Valmiki children are made to sit in the back of the classroom, to sit separately at mealtime, and to clean the school’s toilets. What would I do if I were in that situation? Can I honestly say that I would stay in school and face the constant humiliation? When the script is written before a life even begins—when you can almost know how the child of illiterate Valmiki parents will grow up, just as you can almost know how the child of wealthier forward-caste parents will grow up—you want to do something to change that script.
Being a native English-speaker and having a college education made me qualified to be an English teacher in Japan, salary about $30,000, tax-free. My key skill, if you can call it that, was being able to speak my own language in my own accent. I know plenty of other people who can speak their own language in their own accent. Instead of being rewarded, they are punished, held back from decent jobs because they don’t know English well enough. Can I really still believe that I deserve all these chairs I’ve got stashed away?
When I can see in black and white the ways in which society can systematically include and reward—and also exclude, humiliate, and subjugate—it’s harder to keep living as if I’m exempt.
I wrote this for an AJWS assignment on Passover. The question was:
At the same time as we are instructed to experience liberation, we are also instructed to remember the suffering as our own. Because of our personal experience as slaves, we are commanded to recognize and rectify injustice. “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garments in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt…therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment (Deut. 24:17-18).” In what ways have you witnessed injustice in your experience this year? Does living this experience make you more obligated to address those injustices and in what ways? In seeing injustice on a day to day basis, do you feel more or less obligated to address those issues?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Transportation in Gujarat
Getting around in India is hard to describe, and even harder to experience.
In auto-rickshaws—basically three-wheeled go-carts—I’ve had strangers practically sitting on my lap, because the rickshaw is moving 11 people instead of the 4 for whom seats are actually available. I’ve hitched rides in trucks, the front cabs of which are so crowded with travelers that the manual gear shift is between my legs, substantially too close for comfort when in 2nd gear. And I’ve ridden in buses that seem to have been welded together from scrap metal, with no shocks, seats missing, the diesel engine roaring so loud that it actually comes close to drowning out the passengers yelling on cell phones, the crying babies, and the angry conductor.
At the same time, though, traveling the way my friends and colleagues do has given me a lot to think about.
Once I was heading out on a long bus ride over to one of the NGO’s primary schools. It was supposed to have been an easy journey, because the bus would pick me up just a minute outside of the vocational training center where I live and work, at the local village’s bus stand, and take me directly to the town by which the school is located.
That direct bus comes once a day, at 2 pm. I waited there from 1:45 to 3, and the only vehicles driving by were massive trucks hauling timber or cotton, the local buses, and the local auto-rickshaws, which function as shared taxis with people hanging out of every opening.
I had just about cancelled my plans when the bus finally came a little after 3. I told the conductor where I was going, and bought a ticket for around 100 Rupees, or about 3 dollars—not bad for a four hour journey of a couple hundred kilometers.
Throughout the trip, different people got on and off the bus, and on and off the seat next to mine. For a while, a rather fat woman with flesh rolling out of her sari parked herself against my shoulder, her young son playing on the bus floor. Later, when she left, a man of about 25 took the seat next to mine. His hair was slicked back, and he wore scratched sunglasses, blue jeans, and a faded, stained collared shirt. He took out his cell phone and immediately began cycling through every ringtone stored in the phone from start to finish, as if the syncopated beeped muzak were anything resembling music. His phone was the same model I use now, a Nokia of the kind that was common in America about six or seven years ago. It sells for about forty dollars new, or twenty used.
After getting tired of the ringtones, he turned to me. “Iscon Mall,” he said, bringing up one of the huge malls that have sprung up out of the dust in Ahmedabad over the past three years. “Best mall.” He stressed the word “best” as if to imply that he had been to all kinds of malls, and Iscon had topped them all.
“I’ve never been there,” I said.
“Oh yes, yes,” he answered, feigning understanding. “Shopping is best.”
I had no ipod with me, and no cellphone or camera visible, but the man had seen my white skin and associated me with a kind of lifestyle that he did not have, but clearly was trying to emulate. The mega-mall and chain-store era has begun here, and people want to prove their success by establishing a connection with both.
I continued one of my favorite bus-ride pastimes—people watching—when the man got off. Many of the women on the bus wore so much gold on their ears that the top of the ear literally sagged from the weight. Each ear had at least five or six rings and ornaments in it. Maybe the permanent ear-sag is a mark of prosperity, showing everyone that you possess enough gold to accomplish the sag. Like almost all of the other women on the bus, they wore bright, sparkling saris with part of the cloth pulled just over part of the head. They could adjust the amount that they pulled the cloth over their head, so that the extremely thin cloth could function as a veil, a way to block the sun, to wipe away sweat, or any one of a number of other uses.
Though the rule has exceptions, unmarried girls and women more often wear the salwar kameez, a knee-length cut dress with matching slacks and long, flowing scarf. Schoolgirls like the ones who got on the bus on their way home from school typically wear a salwar kameez, adding the scarf once they reach about 12 years old. Girls and women constantly adjust the scarf to a position that seems appropriate; often, it is used to preserve modesty, and is pulled down over the chest.
Most middle-aged or old men on the bus wore all white, usually a long cotton kurta with white cotton pants. Many were proudly mustachioed; mustaches are a symbol of strength and manhood in India, and nearly all police officers have huge, curled and oiled mustaches. Some wore turbans, the style of which depends on the caste to which they belong. If the turban is brightly colored and the man is wearing big gold earrings, he is probably a Bharvad, or shepherd. In that case, he is probably also wearing a bright blue or green skirt-like lower body wrap, has a big mustache, and holds his head high. If the man has a white turban, no gold earnings, but the same kind of bright lower-body wrap, he is likely a Rabari, another caste.
Another time, I was on my way back from the visiting my friend Prakash’s village. Prakash is one of the tailoring instructors here, and he was with me at the time. We didn’t get to Sanand, the nearby town eight kilometers from the vocational training center, until just about midnight. After about seven or eight o’clock, the only way to get to Nani Devti, the village next to the center, is by hitching a ride in a truck. I’ve done this a bunch of times, but never as late as midnight.
As trucks pulled by, we flagged them and shouted, “Devti? Nani Devti?” But none slowed down to listen. Two trucks pulled over and stopped, but that was because the drivers were resting for the night. Apparently, drivers are worried about picking people up after a certain time. The hitchhikers always give the driver 5 or 10 Rupees for the ride, but at night it may not be enough.
Finally, after one o’clock, we got a ride in the front cab of a truck with one more hitchhiker. When we were about one or two kilometers outside of Nani Devti, we took a right onto a sandy path, and the driver turned off the engine. Construction was being done, and his dump truck had to change places with a full dump truck. We would get into the full dump truck, which would take us the additional kilometer.
We watched as a big caterpillar construction shoveling machine (I know there’s a better name for it, but I don’t know it) finished filling up the dump truck that we needed. Once full, however, it wasn’t able to drive up the sandy hill to the level path. The construction machine took out some of the sand from the truck, but that still didn’t help. So the machine got behind the dump truck, and used its shovel to push the back of the dump truck all the way up the hill. It seemed like a very India Moment.
Our new truck stopped and picked us up. “Who are these guys?” the new driver asked the old one.
“These guys are going to Nani Devti,” our original driver answered, “and the other one’s going to Bavla.”
“Fine, but who are they? Are they all right?” The new driver seemed worried that we might injure or rob him, but our original driver reassured him that we were safe, and we finally got back to the center a little before two in the morning.
Usually when I want to get to Sanand, I take one of the shared rickshaw-taxis. The twenty-minute ride costs 5 Rupees, and is really the only way of getting into town. If I’m lucky I get a middle seat. Sometimes I have to squish myself onto three inches of seat, next to the driver and three or four other men in the front, holding onto part of the rickshaw frame to make sure I don’t fall out. If it’s really crowded, I have to stand on the back rack, holding on to a different part of the frame. That’s the only way that seems really dangerous, and I try to avoid it when I can.
The trip to Sanand goes by two or three other villages, and the scenes are very much typical of rural India: women and girls carrying head-loads of water, bundles of sticks (for use as fuel), or weeds and plants (for fodder for cows and buffalos), young men tending to a herd of water buffalos and cows, a few wandering goats, and, if it is harvest time, women in the fields cutting the rice or wheat with a sickle.
Most of the houses that we pass by are small, one-story, made of brick with either a clay-tile roof, corrugated tin roof, or plastic tarp roof. As the rickshaw moves closer to Sanand, though, the Darbar houses appear on the left. Darbars are a dominant land-owning caste. Hundreds of years ago, they were local lords and nobles. They are mostly still very wealthy because of their land inheritance, and their huge, two or three-story houses testify to that fact.
I’m about typed out for now, but I hope you can get a kind of idea of what traveling has been like for me here.
In auto-rickshaws—basically three-wheeled go-carts—I’ve had strangers practically sitting on my lap, because the rickshaw is moving 11 people instead of the 4 for whom seats are actually available. I’ve hitched rides in trucks, the front cabs of which are so crowded with travelers that the manual gear shift is between my legs, substantially too close for comfort when in 2nd gear. And I’ve ridden in buses that seem to have been welded together from scrap metal, with no shocks, seats missing, the diesel engine roaring so loud that it actually comes close to drowning out the passengers yelling on cell phones, the crying babies, and the angry conductor.
At the same time, though, traveling the way my friends and colleagues do has given me a lot to think about.
Once I was heading out on a long bus ride over to one of the NGO’s primary schools. It was supposed to have been an easy journey, because the bus would pick me up just a minute outside of the vocational training center where I live and work, at the local village’s bus stand, and take me directly to the town by which the school is located.
That direct bus comes once a day, at 2 pm. I waited there from 1:45 to 3, and the only vehicles driving by were massive trucks hauling timber or cotton, the local buses, and the local auto-rickshaws, which function as shared taxis with people hanging out of every opening.
I had just about cancelled my plans when the bus finally came a little after 3. I told the conductor where I was going, and bought a ticket for around 100 Rupees, or about 3 dollars—not bad for a four hour journey of a couple hundred kilometers.
Throughout the trip, different people got on and off the bus, and on and off the seat next to mine. For a while, a rather fat woman with flesh rolling out of her sari parked herself against my shoulder, her young son playing on the bus floor. Later, when she left, a man of about 25 took the seat next to mine. His hair was slicked back, and he wore scratched sunglasses, blue jeans, and a faded, stained collared shirt. He took out his cell phone and immediately began cycling through every ringtone stored in the phone from start to finish, as if the syncopated beeped muzak were anything resembling music. His phone was the same model I use now, a Nokia of the kind that was common in America about six or seven years ago. It sells for about forty dollars new, or twenty used.
After getting tired of the ringtones, he turned to me. “Iscon Mall,” he said, bringing up one of the huge malls that have sprung up out of the dust in Ahmedabad over the past three years. “Best mall.” He stressed the word “best” as if to imply that he had been to all kinds of malls, and Iscon had topped them all.
“I’ve never been there,” I said.
“Oh yes, yes,” he answered, feigning understanding. “Shopping is best.”
I had no ipod with me, and no cellphone or camera visible, but the man had seen my white skin and associated me with a kind of lifestyle that he did not have, but clearly was trying to emulate. The mega-mall and chain-store era has begun here, and people want to prove their success by establishing a connection with both.
I continued one of my favorite bus-ride pastimes—people watching—when the man got off. Many of the women on the bus wore so much gold on their ears that the top of the ear literally sagged from the weight. Each ear had at least five or six rings and ornaments in it. Maybe the permanent ear-sag is a mark of prosperity, showing everyone that you possess enough gold to accomplish the sag. Like almost all of the other women on the bus, they wore bright, sparkling saris with part of the cloth pulled just over part of the head. They could adjust the amount that they pulled the cloth over their head, so that the extremely thin cloth could function as a veil, a way to block the sun, to wipe away sweat, or any one of a number of other uses.
Though the rule has exceptions, unmarried girls and women more often wear the salwar kameez, a knee-length cut dress with matching slacks and long, flowing scarf. Schoolgirls like the ones who got on the bus on their way home from school typically wear a salwar kameez, adding the scarf once they reach about 12 years old. Girls and women constantly adjust the scarf to a position that seems appropriate; often, it is used to preserve modesty, and is pulled down over the chest.
Most middle-aged or old men on the bus wore all white, usually a long cotton kurta with white cotton pants. Many were proudly mustachioed; mustaches are a symbol of strength and manhood in India, and nearly all police officers have huge, curled and oiled mustaches. Some wore turbans, the style of which depends on the caste to which they belong. If the turban is brightly colored and the man is wearing big gold earrings, he is probably a Bharvad, or shepherd. In that case, he is probably also wearing a bright blue or green skirt-like lower body wrap, has a big mustache, and holds his head high. If the man has a white turban, no gold earnings, but the same kind of bright lower-body wrap, he is likely a Rabari, another caste.
Another time, I was on my way back from the visiting my friend Prakash’s village. Prakash is one of the tailoring instructors here, and he was with me at the time. We didn’t get to Sanand, the nearby town eight kilometers from the vocational training center, until just about midnight. After about seven or eight o’clock, the only way to get to Nani Devti, the village next to the center, is by hitching a ride in a truck. I’ve done this a bunch of times, but never as late as midnight.
As trucks pulled by, we flagged them and shouted, “Devti? Nani Devti?” But none slowed down to listen. Two trucks pulled over and stopped, but that was because the drivers were resting for the night. Apparently, drivers are worried about picking people up after a certain time. The hitchhikers always give the driver 5 or 10 Rupees for the ride, but at night it may not be enough.
Finally, after one o’clock, we got a ride in the front cab of a truck with one more hitchhiker. When we were about one or two kilometers outside of Nani Devti, we took a right onto a sandy path, and the driver turned off the engine. Construction was being done, and his dump truck had to change places with a full dump truck. We would get into the full dump truck, which would take us the additional kilometer.
We watched as a big caterpillar construction shoveling machine (I know there’s a better name for it, but I don’t know it) finished filling up the dump truck that we needed. Once full, however, it wasn’t able to drive up the sandy hill to the level path. The construction machine took out some of the sand from the truck, but that still didn’t help. So the machine got behind the dump truck, and used its shovel to push the back of the dump truck all the way up the hill. It seemed like a very India Moment.
Our new truck stopped and picked us up. “Who are these guys?” the new driver asked the old one.
“These guys are going to Nani Devti,” our original driver answered, “and the other one’s going to Bavla.”
“Fine, but who are they? Are they all right?” The new driver seemed worried that we might injure or rob him, but our original driver reassured him that we were safe, and we finally got back to the center a little before two in the morning.
Usually when I want to get to Sanand, I take one of the shared rickshaw-taxis. The twenty-minute ride costs 5 Rupees, and is really the only way of getting into town. If I’m lucky I get a middle seat. Sometimes I have to squish myself onto three inches of seat, next to the driver and three or four other men in the front, holding onto part of the rickshaw frame to make sure I don’t fall out. If it’s really crowded, I have to stand on the back rack, holding on to a different part of the frame. That’s the only way that seems really dangerous, and I try to avoid it when I can.
The trip to Sanand goes by two or three other villages, and the scenes are very much typical of rural India: women and girls carrying head-loads of water, bundles of sticks (for use as fuel), or weeds and plants (for fodder for cows and buffalos), young men tending to a herd of water buffalos and cows, a few wandering goats, and, if it is harvest time, women in the fields cutting the rice or wheat with a sickle.
Most of the houses that we pass by are small, one-story, made of brick with either a clay-tile roof, corrugated tin roof, or plastic tarp roof. As the rickshaw moves closer to Sanand, though, the Darbar houses appear on the left. Darbars are a dominant land-owning caste. Hundreds of years ago, they were local lords and nobles. They are mostly still very wealthy because of their land inheritance, and their huge, two or three-story houses testify to that fact.
I’m about typed out for now, but I hope you can get a kind of idea of what traveling has been like for me here.
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