Out-of-Placeness

As we finally push on with the long-delayed landscaping, I feel sometimes like adding a garden temple to Ganesha. It was a lovely temple in the courtyard of the Mayfair Hotel in Puri, Orissa that first made me think about it. Every morning, the priest would come and clean and decorate the Nandi in the little temple. How nice, I thought if I could have a little grotto for Ganesha in my backyard, although I doubt I would keep it as nicely as the priest did his little Shiva temple. But now that I live in Fairfield County, I wonder if my efforts will meet with approval or with suspicion. Here, anything that is not Christian in form or substance is viewed as crazy New Age or even worse, as black magic. My kids' babysitter N. described to me with horror how she had decided against the purchase of a home where the owner practiced, she insisted, black magic. How do you know, I asked? Well, she replied, he had a room full of images and there was a black book in there. It made me wonder, was the owner perhaps a Hindu with a puja room? After all, Kali can look pretty fearsome. But then again, Hindus typically won't cover their sacred books in black. Perhaps the poor man was just an avid collector of what seemed exotic art to him. Either way, it made me rethink my plans for my garden Ganesha. This is what it means to be a minority in a foreign land: you really have to think about your actions and how they might be perceived. I've temporarily shelved the idea of a little garden grotto for Ganesha. I certainly don't want the benevolent god of good luck to be scorned as pagan, or heathen or a deity of black magic. But most of all, I definitely don't want him to be taken for a god-awful garden gnome.

There's Criticism and then there's Criticism

I finally read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. It was troubling to read, both for its content and for the author's attitudes to her native land and faith. At one level, I completely understand her incredible anger against her own upbringing. We feel the oppressiveness of our own cultures far more than do outsiders to our cultures. The disillusioned Catholic or Lutheran has far more anger against his or her own faith than would a Hindu who has only a hazy idea of what Christian guilt or original sin is all about. Similarly, we as outsiders can only shudder at Hirsi Ali's childhood experience of circumcision and of the oppressive gender relations in Saudi Arabia. But our lives are not affected by it so we have only a partial understanding of these issues.
So why then am I not wholly persuaded of the utter horror of Islam, as Hirsi Ali would have us believe? Partly, because I am familiar with the work of other reformers of Islam. The most notable being Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi. Now Badshah Khan was a Pashtun, a member of the same groups of people who live in Pakistan and Afghanistan, peoples now being pursued by NATO, the Pakistani armies (with lukewarm enthusiasam) as they are now great supporters of the Taliban. But less than a hundred years ago, these same Pashtuns became the best example of nonviolent resistance to the British, their leader the Frontier Gandhi, the living example of how any faith and any people can be harnessed for the cause of good.

The Frontier Gandhi worked tirelessly against medieval Pashtun practices as the veiling of women, their segregation from larger society, their powerlessness. He also campaigned against the daily violence and the gun culture that prevailed among his own people. He endured prison and torture for all these activities. But he was so powerful an influence among the Pashtuns that the day he died, hundreds of thousands of Pashtuns crossed the Afghan border to join other Pashtuns in mourning the passing of this great man. His Khudai Khidmatgars - red-shirted volunteers - have passed into legend as the reformist service-oriented league that captured the imagination of an entire generation of freedom fighters. Why did he succeed (albeit briefly, as after independence in 1947, he became a political prisoner of the Pakistani government)? Ghaffar Khan succeeded because his criticism was rooted in love for his country and his people, not in hate of these tribal people. This, I think, is the difference between him and the Hirsi Ali's and Irshad Manji's of the Islamic world. The Frontier Gandhi often said that it was difficult to love the Pashtuns, who are a notoriously violent and abrasive people. But in order to bring about change in these societies, he insisted that one has to love them. His whole life was a testimony of the power of love that enabled him to work amongst the worlds's most "unlovable" people.

Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji might make me nod in agreement at the plight of their status under Islam. But their ill-concealed hatred of their own people make me realize why they are not female avatars of the Frontier Gandhi. They have huge audiences among the non-Muslim western audience that applauds them but they have no standing at all among their own people, ironically, the very ones that they wish to change through the story of their lives. Are there any Muslim activists who do seem authentic to me? Yes, there are. For example there is Pervez Hoodbhoy, physicist in Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, who is a voice of reason. He is unafraid to criticize fundamentalists and their government patrons. So is Asma Jehangir, human rights activist in Pakistan. Why are they both more convincing to me than Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji? It is because they both live and work in the societies that they want to change and they have at the very least affection for the people to whom they want to bring change. Affection or even respect for Somalis or Muslims in general is not something that comes across in the books authored by either Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji.

Bridal Decline

I was so sorry to read about the plight of sari weavers in Varanasi in the Washington Post this morning. Both realities exist in my native land. On the one hand, there is the relentless upward march of the middle class and on the other, there exists also the downward spiral of some of the most beautiful traditions of the country. I'm so glad that I bucked the trend of wearing purple - or whatever the couleur du jour was - and decided to wear a beautiful, traditional red Benarasi sari for my wedding all those years ago. Here in New England, I wonder what handicraft traditions went for a toss as the age of plastic and cheap imported clothes caught on. Anyone knows?

The Bourgeois Life

It's been two years since I had this blog. Never told friends or family about it. It's just there. But what really is it about? It's hard writing about things when you exclude work, neighbors, family and friends. After all, these are the daily material of our lives. But early on, I decided to write about my life outside of work. So, although I find my part time job very stimulating - it's useful, not just a part-time vanity job - and although I like most of my neighbors and family and all of my friends, they are off-limits to this blog too, except in a very general way.
Of the things that remain, I find myself reflecting mainly on my lifestyle. And living here in Southwestern Connecticut, it's all about real estate, the price of gas, and the activities at school. Once in a while I go into the city and look wistfully at the could-have-been me me as she joins her friends for an evening of fun. The alternative me wears snazzy clothes, preposterous high heels and looks, I have to admit it, very fetching. Then, after a dizzy evening of socializing, my substitute self deflates her spirits, puts herself onto a late evening Metro North train and returns to her bourgeois life in the suburbs.

Edible Forest Gardens

The magnolias are done swooning on my lawn, their fat pink opulence already becoming this year's spring memory. There are the usual forsythias, the dogwoods are still a tender, tiny white and pink glow. It's springtime, folks, and summer is just around the corner. K. is outside planting his "edible forest garden." He hated gardening (or so he claims) until this past year when he read a book called Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke (with Eric Toensmeier) and now he has gone absolutely crazy, planting pear trees and plum trees, blueberry bushes and hazelnut trees (bushes?). I, who never could tell a zinnia from a dahlia, have also been infected but my enthusiasm is more muted. My energy is directed at keeping something pretty and flowery around the yard. I chose a ground cover of strawberries and goldenstar and hopefully that will be attractive to look at. To this K. added wintergreen which, so I am told, has edible berries.

In the backyard, I have become an expert chipper. While K. digs up the pesky bushes that we can't eat (and the deer won't eat either), I use our new machine to grind all of them into chips to be composted into topsoil. Farmer K. contemplates his soon-to-be edible yard with a beatific smile. I am less entranced, thinking of all the deer that will now show up. In any case, I'm more of an indoors-type. Prefer polishing the newly-installed shelves in my office so that I can finally start work. Or maybe I'll just surf the internet a little while longer...

Gilding the Lily

I LOVE my new house! OK, my old/new house. As we decorated the Christmas tree yesterday, I thought again how dressing up the house is such a joy, because it is so effortless. The walls are clean, the floors unmarked, the staircase unscuffed (and as of two weeks ago, safely carpetted). A flick of the duster here, a whisk of the broom there, and everything is shining again. I do get help too, so all in all the house manages to stay clean most of the week except weekends when we totally mess it up, the kids, K. and me.

I've always loved new houses or newly-restored ones. You won't find me sentimentally lingering over "charming" old houses. Please note that this is not a paean to McMansions. It's not the size that matters, just the clean new feeling. Having grown up in a variety of creaky, crumbly old houses in India (and some new, ugly, modern flats with dismal yellow interiors - still creaky and crumbly because of the bad materials used), I have always appreciated the joys of plumbing that works, roofs that don't leak, doors that don't stick, toilets that don't make you queasy to look at them, and above all, I loved houses where the grime hadn't settled into a thick coating of black grease making cleaning a constantly unsuccessful war.

Note again, I haven't said a word about furniture. Furniture or its arrangement is relatively unimportant to me. As long as there are no bugs lurking within mattresses and cushions, I don't care whether people seat me in Louis XV grandeur or on humble floor cushions. For that matter, we don't have too much furniture in our new place either. Maybe that's part of the reason for loving the house. Because it's relatively uncluttered still (except for the kids' clutter) and therefore easy to keep clean.

Hindu Shopping for a Christian holiday

This year the holidays have been rather sad. A close member of my extended family (my brother D.'s mother-in-law) passed away the day before Thanksgiving. It's been a rough year for D. and his wife. Still, at least we got to see D. and my niece I. as they were in Connecticut before leaving for Kolkatta. Luckily, the kids are too little to be affected by the sadness. They just played and squabbled like kids do.

Other than that, I have been busy shopping. As I made my rounds of malls and stores, I reflected on why it is that I - the Hindu from India - got stuck with the burden of buying Christmas presents for my American husband's family. Is it just a gendered thing? Do wives generally bear the brunt of maintaining holiday traditions, even holidays they never grew up with? Oh we had Christmas in India but for us Hindus, it was just an excuse for another party at the club, not the occasion to buy presents or cook large meals. That was Durga Puja and Diwali. K. is grateful for my efforts as he hates shopping and is not religious at all (so there is no sentimentality about the holiday either).


But speaking to friends, I realized that perhaps I'm just the dupe in this arrangement! Many of my friends leave it up to their husbands to shop for their own families. I think the reason I got involved was because of the fear of embarrassment. K. hates shopping so much that Christmas presents from him would be last-minute purchases of gift cards to Carvel or something. And I thought that I, with my taste and thoughtfulness, would find better things that his family would appreciate. I suspect they do like my choices but every November/December I am kicking myself while my husband stretches luxuriously in front of the TV. How do I get out of this situation of my own making? Without his mother receiving gift cards from Dunkin' Donuts?

Military Memories

I am finally getting around to writing thank-you notes to so many generous hosts during this past visit to India. But getting myself organized got me thinking of my childhood, specially since this time we visited Rajasthan where I last was when I was six or seven years old. It was the edge of the desert where we lived. There were scorpions and snakes, mainly scorpions. We had to shake out our shoes every day in case any venomous critter lurked within. The sandstorms were blinding, leaving everything coated in gritty, glittering powder. Everything was brown and dry, very few green things existed. We were the first occupants of the new, ugly MES flats that marked the continuation of the "ugly bureaucrat" style of architecture, begun I believe in the 1950s. Our first school bus was a horse-drawn tonga. Alas, no winsome "Basanti" from Sholay, just a series of withered old men. Then came a converted one-ton truck that ferried us all to our different schools. This was the tough-as-old-boots army brat lifestyle where fathers disappeared for two-three months at a time for exercises (or "maneuvers" as they are called here) and the cantonment became a community of women and children who depended on each other for moral support. We played outside, rode our bicycles madly for hours, went to the park where creaky old see-saws could upend you with their vicious lack of suspension. Later, when we moved out of the cantonment, I carpooled in the genteel company of a wealthy neighbor's daughter who would have been horrified at the hearty rigor of my military upbringing.

Going back this August, the changes were mindboggling to me. There were still plenty of camel-carts but the desert had disappeared. There are now trees everywhere, even middle-class army types seem to have more disposable income and the houses seem bigger and more posh (although the ugly MES flats are stubbornly long-lived). There is still poverty but the heartbreaking deprivation that I saw in my childhood is gone. These are, I think, the fruits of independence. My generation hopefully will not see, as my grandparents did under British rule, the absolute wretchedness that ruled everywhere around them. That misery exists, but it is more in pockets now, rather than spread everywhere. On the other hand, the gaps now are more apparent. Before, we all swam in the same murky sea of restricted consumer choices and dreamed our limited hopes of upward mobility (follow in parental footsteps or doctor/engineer/civil services). But now, the wealthy and even the upper-middle-class lead lives of comparable comfort to their western counterparts (with the added perks of servants and overflowing daily help with household chores). The lower-middle-class now have more wealth around them to compare their lot with and feel unhappy about.

Diwali - Not!

Diwali was very subdued. It was a usual weekend day, soccer and stuff. We did not even have fireworks as K. was concerned about the dry leaves. Very disappointing, but there you have it. Went for a Diwali party/birthday party Friday evening. After ages, I wore a sari, one of the six I had bought for my wedding nearly ten years ago. It felt good to see that I fit into the blouse again (I had ballooned in the in-between, i.e. baby-production, years) and in fact the sleeves are slightly loose now. It felt good in general to be dressed up for a change although it is of course difficult to be chasing a toddler around in a silk sari.
News from Kolkatta is also sombre. Loved ones who are seriously ill. It's a grim Diwali all around.

Hitting the Ground Running

We have been back home for the last six weeks. Initially, tt was very disorienting to be back to where the streets are so empty and where there are no itinerant peddlers and vegetable vendors "bleating like sheep on a Welsh hillside" as Trevor Fishlock put it. But having to get S. to school the second day after we arrived put an end to undue wallowing in nostalgia. There were clothes to be organized, shoes and backpacks to be bought, the house to be organized. The workers who had slowed down their pace in our absence came back and once again, the house is full of noise and dust and the shouts of electricians to each other. So now, five-six weeks later, Kolkatta is a fading memory of washed coconut trees and uncomfortable car rides into the city. S. has been to many birthday parties already and whenever I see his cute little shape bobbing and weaving through a crowd of his peers, I am always struck by how grown-up he looks now. Not at all the little baby that I rocked to sleep in the glider that now sits in my office. But at least I can still recall the sensation when I hold baby or look at her face in the crib, so similar to her brother and yet so...her!
OK, I am overcome with maternal sentiment. More later.

Tuned Out in Kolkatta

I don't know how K. does it, but in this city with its zillion assaults on the senses, he is completely tuned out! I mean, I come home from visits to friends and relatives with my nerves buzzing from near-misses with mini-buses and pedestrians but K. is totally Zen. Most of the time is taken up with visits to relatives and friends. S. is thrilled because my friend from college has a son about the same age so life here has been one long play date. Baby is of course still bewildered and clingy. The food is very good but there is too much of it, so alas I will have to go home to Connecticut and do penance for my gluttony. Gym, here I come. There is plenty of help here domestically but the nanny my mother hired is a complete failure. She has no technique and the baby will not go to her, period. So I am stuck babysitting day and night. I am getting annoyed but what to do? Oh well, will be home soon with all my daily schedule of work and home, etc.

Travelling Home

Well, we are here in Calcutta (sorry, Kolkatta) where I was amazed to note as we stepped outside the airpport, it was cooler than Connecticut! But ever since, it has been getting hotter and muggier so it doesn't feel too different from when we left.

The parents are of course delighted because all three grandchildren are here and the house is full of the sound of laughter and of my daughter screaming her lungs out whenever the specially-hired nanny approaches her.

The jetlag is spectacular! The kids go to sleep every morning at 10:00 and then wake up after lunch. They both wake up at night at 3:30 AM! And then sit like little owls in my parents bedroom with Cartoon Network switched on. Honestly, my folks have to be the best grandparents around! Not only do they not mind the invasion of their bedroom at that ungodly hour but my mother actually gets up and makes everyone tea at 4:00 AM. Not the kids of course. Speaking of television, all of S's favorite shows are here - Sponge Bob Squarepants, Avatar, Drake and Josh, etc. all dubbed in Hindi. S. sits hypnotized by it all even though he probably understands nothing.

More of the Same

Today I went shopping for light fixtures. To be honest, I hardly ever paid attention to light fixtures before but now that we need them for our own house, I can hardly pass a house without noting the style of their lights. Lantern, wall-mounted, polished brass, bronze, iron, traditional, modern, rustic....And I cannot choose one! This is where one needs a good sense of dimensions: too big and your lights are all that people can see, too small and they disappear. I spent an hour or so at Fairfield Lighting. They are smaller than their competitor in South Norwalk but that was precisely their strength. Fewer but more invested sales people, one of whom took a lot of time educating me on what sizes and styles to look for. I like that, not that I have anything against Klaff's, with whom I have done a lot of business too over the last year. And maybe I will still order something online after all, let's see.

Thunder, Lightning, and War

Thunder, lightning, hail, lots of rain, and a sick child! That was last night. You would not believe it today, it is so clear and sunny and relatively mild. As if the weather had a giant temper tantrum and now is all sweetness and light.

We are leaving for India soon, where the government has banned blogger. So probably there will be no updates unless whichever bureaucrat thought this up decides to relent. Still, there are too many other things happening there, like the Bombay blasts, and the water logging because of the monsoons. I wonder if I will have the time to think about this blog. I do hope that there is not some insane crackdown on the internet in general. I rely on it more than on TV for my daily fix of news.

Speaking of news, at least our trip to India will not be as nervousness-inducing as this poor Stamford guy's story. The situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate rapidly. Poor Lebanon is of course between a rock and a hard place. Hizbollah backed by Syria on the one hand and Israel backed by the US on the other and both sides are reducing the country to an absolute rubble. The civilian casualties, the stunningly callous term "collateral damage" always infuriates me, are amazingly high and disproportionately Lebanese. That in itself is cause for anger. The utter disregard for civilian casualties in Lebanon is amazing but fairly typical given the attitudes to people of Middle Eastern origin in the west. Angry Arab raves and rants about the war there. But do be advised that he calls himself an anarchist so his opinions are, well, anarchist. I sometimes agree with him but being an army brat, I am less scornful of rightfully appointed government or authority than he is. Note, I said "rightfully."

Apprentice-ship

There are a number of young men, boys really, working on our construction site of a home. Now that we are back in the house, I observe them much more as they hammer and saw and chisel and nail. One just celebrated his nineteenth birthday last week, he informed me as he swung shovelsful of dirt to fill up a hole. Another, from Costa Rica, mournfully informed me of Costa Rica's elimination from the ongoing World Cup. The painter's assistant from Brazil, is friends with the Costa Rican, and somehow the Portuguese-Spanish conversation is mutually comprehensible thanks to the passion both share for soccer. I don't want to comment on them as individuals - they are all quite nice - but I do notice how very young they are and how hard they are working. I suppose this is the class system at work. The neighborhood teens cycle off to swimming and to hang out at friends' houses and these young men from Stratford and Milford and Trumbull build their houses.

There doesn't seem to be any rancor though, no scoffing at the rich people whose houses they build. I think this is because they are all skilled workers who take great pride in what they create. These young men stand around after a hard days' work admiring the shine of the newly-finished cherry floors and at the craftsmanship of the master tiler who arranged the foyer tiles just so. Also, there is a pairing off. The contractor and his son, the electrician and his son, the mason and his son, sort of like the old days of apprenticeship when knowledge was handed down from father to son. Except there is no absolute guarantee that the sons will follow in the fathers' footsteps. Just the assurance of a wise, second opinion to fall back on.

And then there are the fatherless ones - the assistants who place themselves under the supervision of the contractor and who learn from him, from master craftsman to apprentice craftsmen, the knowledge chain continues.

Sunny day blues

I'm one of the few in this well-beached part of the country who does not like baking in the sun. Never have, never will. Growing up, the sun was a mortal enemy - except during the damp, dank monsoons of June-July. And even here, under the gentler northern sun I still don't like being hot and sweaty and shading my eyes - sunglassed and all - from the glare bouncing off the languid Sound lapping contentedly at the edges of our golden town beach. Sunscreen just makes me feel even stickier although I dutifully slap it on. And I worry about my kids who could play at the beach all day if I allowed it, regardless of the blazing sun and the humidity. Oh well, since I am supposed to love it, I suppose I must "enjoy" the beach. Oh I know, boo-hoo you're thinking. But still, we bourgeoisie are allowed to crib too.

Insights from Iraq

I certainly feel the same way as this Iraqi blogger, Hassan Kharrufa, although his need to keep his lives separate has far more urgency than my desire to write freely about my largely peaceful life outside of work in southwestern Connecticut, give or take a few run-in's with carpenters and installers. Not that work is so conflict-ridden either, but then it is only part-time. How sad the Iraqi situation is, how utterly removed from mine. I pray that it continues to be so removed, I know as I write what an utterly selfish thought that is, but when I look at my children, well, that's what I think and any parent reading this will instantly understand and forgive the selfishness. If one didn't know how man-made the situation was, one would just think that the place is cursed, first Saddam, then an uninvited war, then mayhem, then disorder, then mass murder. I guess that's what happens when Trotskyites, former or practising, take charge - permanent revolution in both the US and in Iraq. Thank goodness, Trotsky did not succeed in the former USSR. The plight of the poor Soviets would probably have been much worse if this is the fruit of that philosophy.

Dark Thunder and Foul Murder

Dark clouds loom over the Sound, the sea gulls are circling very low. The rain will soon be here - in torrents, I think. But! It's Friday! It's a long weekend! What shall I do? Tommorow is K's birthday, so perhaps I should get my act together and wrap his presents. Unfortunately, brother-in-law R can't make it or else we could all have gone for a lo-ong drive to Mystic, take the kids to the Aquarium, etc. M. is out for a walk, so I took the opportunity to finish reading Agatha Christie's Body in the Library. I've read it many times. Read it, put the book away for a few years, then when I return to it, I find that I have often forgotten whodunnit, so the thrill is new the next time. I find this happens often to me with Christie murder mysteries. I don't find this happening with any other writer. Do I really forget or is it a forced forgetting so that I will enjoy the book again the second, third, fourth, fifth time? Also, I enjoy reading about stuffy British society from the forties and fifties and thanking my good fortune that I escaped being born into that dismal milieu. So, I bring to my enjoyment of Christies books a horrified fascination with the overbearing vicar's wife and the Conservative Colonel Bantry and the faceless parlormaids and cooks. Good heavens! Could such a world actually exist and flourish? I suppose it did. I am so glad that it passed by me, or before me.

Sunshine

Sun's out today. Yay! Games are on, construction moves forward and the day looks good. We went to eat at La Colline Verte, an upscale French restaurant in Fairfield yesterday. It was disconcerting to walk into a French country dining room overlooking the parking lot of a strip mall. But the food was great and they closed the blinds so I could maintain the illusion of la douce France. Oh, how I miss my Paris, [stuff about Paris deleted - too gushing] but it is time to plan another visit to the land of the friendly croissants.

Rain, rain go away

So things are still pretty damp around these parts, although the sun finally came out weakly just before the day ended. Games and playdates were cancelled. We did a brief visit to the construction site. Things are happening but things are still very raw. I hope we can get in before the lease here runs out. Sigh!