On March 9 at precisely 1:35pm Mr. Das handed over a DHL package to my quivering hands after much jumping, dancing and skidding around the common room! Ahhhh, sighs of relief were heard all around the world at this fateful moment. Thali Topshiba, as I have named him, is full of quarks, but hey, so am I. We are perfect for each other! The next several posts are written as I recorded them in my journal. Much has evolved since their recording, but I thought I should give insight into my initial impressions. Long overdue:
A day in the life of Indian Ellie (these events are subject to change. I am learning nothing, not even existing recognized states, are permanent fixtures in India…mine could change while im studying here. Making my semester potentially historical!)
5:15am spend ½ a second trying to figure out where I am as I feel around for my watch alarm. Hyderabad, right. Sioned, my roommate, and I once again remind each other why we decided to take the certification yoga course while I thumb through the darkness to find sweats, tennies, head lamp, keys…the essentials. A quite groggy tooth-brushing session takes place and fellow yogis greet each other with grunts and mouths full of foamy minty paste.
5:30am Yogis assemble! We tie our hoods securely, place a much needed headlamp over top our hoodie clad heads and thrust our hands into “sock mittens” just prior to mounting our bikes. We look like a crazed gang of mining lepers--our matted hair shoved beneath our hoods, our lamps guiding us on the poorly lit road, not an inch of skin exposed to the cold except our faces. The mornings are quite chilly (probs upper 40’s) in contrast to the dry heat of the afternoon. This is how a desert landscape must react to the lack of sun. How silly for me to bring zero warm clothes! Our single file ride to yoga is steadily uphill. Our morning cycle hinges on balance: ride quickly enough to avoid eager but quite mangy pups that want to be loved, but look terribly diseased (except for the one I named bright eyes) and slow enough to cut our sleepy legs some slack. There aren’t any good conversationalists in our pre-yoga pack, so we swap head bobbles as we listen to the call to prayer and observe the celestial bodies overhead.
5:50am The oddly packaged westerners stumble into the yoga center and quickly swipe mats before they all go. I position myself in the 3rd row and smile healthily at my Indian classmates. Shoot, I really want to know them! The girls just giggle at me and whisper to their friends. Maybe it is because I have socks on my hands, or forgot to take off my headlamp, or the socks on my feet aren’t fit with a sandal dimple between the big and second toe. Whatever the case, I have work to do there!
6:00am Our bull fogged instructor waddles into the Yoga Hall. No one knows his name; we have appropriately dubbed him Papa Ohm. His blue polo stretches tightly over his spherical belly. A white mustache adorns his dark upper lip. Many things about his body are round, but in an odd muscular way--sausage toes, meaty feet, bold forearms, thick neck holding up his froggy head. As he instructs our moves, his voice thunders through the echoy chamber. His old ears restrict him from speaking at a low level. When anyone is performing a posture incorrectly, he raises his voice to deafening decibels while repeating “knees appaart!” While instructing us to relax, instead of injuring our eardrums, he drops his tone much lower. “sagg your body.” I slip in and out of sleep throughout the practice.
7:05am The chanting of the Ohm closes class, and we enter into the chilling sunshine of morning. What a difference the sun makes!! Our ride home from yoga is quite different than our somber star lit ride prior to practice. We chitter, chat and sing on our mostly downhill roll back to Tagore. The day is beautiful; monkey sightings may treat our eyes!
7:20am Dismount at Tagore. We all make conversation while sneakily trying to slip into the 4 showers without the others noticing. Out of the 4 showers, 2 are prime real estate (usually warm and unclogged). It is a fun little game!
8:00am Breakfast! My stomach begins making funny noises when I arrive at the yoga center, so I am commonly the 1st one down for breakfast when they open the door to the dining hall. Every morning toast, hardboiled eggs, cereal and curd are offered. Depending on the day, oatmeal, French toast, banana pancakes, ufo shaped rice patties and curry, a butter roll and chutney, or masala French toast is offered. The most challenging part of breakfast is egg ordering. No matter what you tell our adorable petite kitchen staff, there is no way to predict how the egg will turn out. I have never actually received the egg I thought I ordered. Scrambled eggs look like the scrapings from the frying pan--charred eggy residue left over from previous egg endeavors. Which begs the question, where did the actual eggs go? My multivitamin is swallowed with a swig of freshly squeezed grape juice!
8:30am If im lucky, I have secured a skype date for this time. But mostly I use this time to bum around. Depending on the day I begin class at 9am or 10am. Here I will describe my profs:
Satypriya Raot. Social Stratification. We are currently comparing Indian Social Stratification to Western/Marxist Social Strat. As of late, we have been getting a good look into the caste system. Our professor has the most perfectly groomed mustache! It sits perfectly sized below his nose, not interfering with the functions of his mouth. I have deduced: mustaches in India are a sign of masculinity. Most professionals, gurus, and important figures sport them. I have seen a wide variety of mustache and face combinations, and professor Raout’s is quickly climbing to the top of my mustache log. Prof Raot’s lecturing voice is quite high and restricted, but quite loud in volume--picture a loud Indian Kermit the frog. That fits his voice to a tee actually! He scratches the board with his chalk as he talks. I squirm and clench my teeth each time the chalk screeches across the board. I can only exhale once he has kindly placed the chalk on the desk. The Indian students in the class are a giggly crowd. The girls and boys don’t sit amongst each other. An invisible line segregates the sexes, and now that I reflect, I realize I have been sitting on the “boys side”! Thankfully Raot will repeat his lecture points 8 times before moving onto the next topic. It takes my anglicized ears 8 repeats to understand what he is saying.
Aruna. Kuchipudi Dance. This woman brings the Indian Guru-student relationship to life in her classroom. She is a large woman and demands 100% attention, effort, and respect from her students. Her idea of respect comes in the form of servitude: bringing her tea, fetching her water, buying her an occasional gift, presenting her with the wooden block and rhythm stick, and touching her feet after class. In return she has vowed to turn us into the best kuchipudi dancers out potential will afford. We stand in lines and obey the rhythmic language Aruna beats out on her block and interpret it in to a variety of squatting, kicking, and arm opening movements. I have never moved like this before, but I enjoy the thigh burning challenge. I also have made it my goal to make Aruna smile throughout the course of the semester. She loves to call me out for my goofy antics and harshly corrects our form with sharp words. If we are lucky, she will have to get out of her throne to demonstrate. Despite her size and aged ankles, she never ceases to defy physics with her nimble movements-Quite impressive!
Sucita (Soo-chi-ta). Hindi every day form 12-1. Every class without fail I manage to make Sucita laugh. This comic relief is completely unintentional. My hindi accent is atrocious, but I desperately try!! There is a distinct nasal sound in the hindi language which I can only accomplish if I extremely exaggerate. I talk from the back of my throat to force the uncomfortable sound. Sucita thinks my pronunciation is hilarious! She is a tough cookie and moves our lessons at an impressive rate. She wears a no-nonsense attitude along with her wonderfully colorful salwar kameeze(Indian outfit involving: scarf, pant, and top) and scrunchy. Our class is full of tez log (quick witted people), so the class is fun! I find learning hindi much easier than other languages I have studied. Without fail, every class, I feel time stop. Lunch is served at 1pm. My breakfast at 8 has long since expired, leaving me stuck in a hypoglycemic hindi moment. It hits me suddenly and I can’t focus on anything else. I feel so light headed and usually sit as still as possible to conserve every ounce of energy. I can feel my stomach searching every corner for food as it continually grumbles…so uncomfortable. I always feel weak and small after hindi as I stumble towards lunch.
1:00pm LUNCH! Lunch is a completely vegetarian endeavor. I load my plate ½ full of fresh fruit! Pineapple, papaya, or watermelon are neatly diced each day and sit freshly waiting for my arrival. Oh so crisp and perfectly ripe! Next along the buffet sits the fresh veggies, curd, round bread (cipati, roti, naan or handkerchief), a variety of chutneys and some form of hyper sugary dessert: bread pudding, ladoo, butterscotch bar, coconut bar, honey roll, donut. A tea stand separates the cool buffet from the hot lunch options. Krishna, a petite jovial man, stands at the ready behind the hot food stand. He slaps the surface of curries with his giant spoon and mixes the vegetables while chanting “sooo goodt, sooooo goodt.” He lifts a spoon of dal (a lentil based curry usually bright yellow in color)up to his shoulder, and pours it back into the chrome vat with a flick of the wrist. I don’t know the names of any of the hot food items offered here, so I just point and Krishna slops heaping mountains of food on my plate. I can never finish what he portions me and I hate to waste, so I have come up with a variety of ways to decrease the amount of food he heaps on my plate; each with different success rate. I originally tried stating quite clearly, “only a little!” He understands English, but apparently not this phrase, because that yielded an entire plate drowned in dal. I began to motion with my fingers, little pinching motions, coupled with “just a little, just a little, just a little” on repeat. The heap of rice on my plate and number of fried bread squares smothered my beautiful fruit. My next approach involved precise timing and wrist flicking agility. When I present my plate to Krishna, I still motion and repeat “just a little”, but in addition, I quickly remove my plate while he is dumping on the goods. I must do this quick enough so some of the item lingers on my plate while the rest slops back into its own receptacle. If I move too slowly, Krishna’s spoon will follow my plate and pollute the other containers with its dribble.
2:00pm with lunch in my belly, I swiftly bike to Indian Philosopy. Prof Prasand has an unusually angular nose, rectangular glasses, a single snaggle tooth in his lower row of incisors and a large forehead (not large north to south like dad’s, but expansive east to west). He is slight in stature with a small potbelly, almost as if he is smuggling a seedless watermelon. As he lectures he accumulates excessive amounts of saliva, which never exit from his mouth. Im convinced the snaggle tooth has something to do with his moist speech. He smirks as he asks “How do you know, what you know is true?” In response, students sign and search each other’s eyes for aid. This class is situated right after lunch, and I enjoy prime people watching conditions-- sleepy Americans with full tummies. One girl struggles with her lids for at least 30 minutes each class. She puts up such a good fight and tries shaking her leg, shifting her weight, and pushing up her lowerlids. Im impressed with her efforts, but unfortunately they are always futile. She ends EVERY class with a snooze. Sometimes we place bets on what time she will become comatose.
3:30pm From not until dinner at 7pm endless opportunities arise I like to keep it fresh and mix up my schedule, but here is a list of activities I have done so far:
• Play banana grams
• Play Frisbee
• Volunteer at the Poor Students Ashram
• Play hearts
• Plan trips
• Bike ride
• Practice Tabla
• Watch movies
• Jaunts in town
• Attend Tabla class
• Chai time!
I always build time for exploration into my afternoon. I love spending the afternoon biking through campus, parking off the main road and getting lost in the brush. I have discovered several hidden lakes and a quarry! I joke with the other Dickinsonians that some day we will grab a chai at the quarry.
7:00pm Dinner!!! I am always famished. Krishna and I do the plate/portion dance again. Thankfully, dinner offers protein of the meat variety. Unfortunately, every possible bone stands between me and delicious poultry goodness. As I have mentioned previously, Indians eat with their right hand, which comes in handy(PUNNY!) when searching for tiny bones. Tagore offers us silverware, but I always get handsy with my meals. It s liberating to mix, shovel, mush food with one hand! Transporting the sloppy dal/rice mixture from the plate to mouth is a whole different story. Note, this skill has been cleanly whipped from the western mind and takes much practice to perfect. At first, I would move my hand as quickly as possible to my mouth, emulating a quick gasping motion. This technique yielded a 50% success rate, leaving curried rice mixture slapped on my chin and cheeks more often than in the mouth hole. My clothing and friends were additional casualties of this experimental eating style, so I knew I must quickly adapt (to salvage both clothes and friends). During one out to dinner experience, I attentively observed a teenage Indian to acquire the appropriate technique. Her hands were so quick! It took a full minute of staring to figure out what she was doing with her hands. This instructive staring, coupled with some trials of my own, I have found a swift wrist flicking scoop takes the food to the mouth. My nub thumb is actually perfect for flicking the small rice mixture into my mouth (thanks linds)! Dinner is always followed by 2 tiny scoops ice cream! I never miss ice cream.
7:45-9:30pm another miscellaneous period. I usually try to study hindi or if im lucky ill have a skype date! Or a movie …or stargaze
9:30pm is a strict bed time since my day starts so early. Sioned and I pillow talk from opposite walls as we drift off to the land of malaria medicated dreams.
