Food (Aliyah)

Sorry that it’s taken so long to update. I’m back home, after spending two days in Bangkok with some friends of friends of my parents. Bangkok was so oddly westernized after Chennai. Had it not been for the Thai script on the signs, I could have been in the center of any city in the U.S.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about food. The philosophy of food, that is, the way we regard what we eat. Too often in the West, the emotional and spiritual content of food is neglected. Many of my vegetables come from places in California where I have never been, picked by underpaid migrant laborers under terrible working conditions. I don’t even know where the wheat in my bread was grown. At school, my food is cooked for me by people I hardly know, and who I doubt have any personal feeling for most of the people for whom they prepare food. The numbers of instant microwaved meals continues to proliferate. I know few people who take much care in their cooking, thinking it to be a waste of time.

I don’t believe that this can fail to have a detrimental effect on our health, physical or mental or emotional. After all, there are few special occasions that do not have a food component. I still remember the time, that, after years of using canned cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, my parents bought real cranberries. (Note: cranberry sauce is very easy to make, and tastes much better than the store-bought variety.)

So what does this have to do with LAFTI? I have often said, not at all in jest, that at Kuthur the cooks are the most important people. Nothing could ever get done without the endless vats of sambar and rice that emerge, as if by magic, from the little, dark kitchen. This importance is recognized by everyone. The food rarely changes, but it is very nutritious and prepared with much love and care. The ingredients are mostly local, bought from local farmers or even picked of plants in the garden next to the office (where they grow huge bananas and Italian tomatoes). The sambar powder is ground across the street. There is very little fancy equipment and most of the knives will barely cut butter. But there are now spoons!

So I’m back. I’ve been eating David’s fine cooking, along with the occasional piece of pizza (one of the few foods I really missed in India). I sent in an application to the coop house at school, though I am unlikely to get in. Last year, the college sent out a survey on houses and students responded that they didn’t want more coop housing. They don’t want the responsibility or the work. I want that responsibility for my own living and for that of my neighbors. If we can’t take care of our own living, how can we ever take care of our world?

I still don’t like Indian bitter gourd.

Thank you all for being such wonderful readers. Hopefully Tatsu will get to India soon, and post for a bit.

Peace with you,

Aliyah

Landscapes (Aliyah)

I ended up traveling second class both to and from Gujarat. The train was not overly crowded and the trip was as pleasant as any long train journey can be expected to be. I spent most of the trip staring out the window, half asleep. It rained several times, which was nice.

As we traveled up towards the northwest, the land became soggier, and the scripts of railroad signs changed from Tamil to Telugu to Kannada to Hindi to Gujarati. Karnataka was full of mud and water buffaloes. I tried to keep a count of the buffaloes, but had to stop after I got over to fifty in ten minutes.

The thing that struck me most as I crossed the Indian peninsula was how human it all is. Nearly all the land was under some form of cultivation, and that which was not was mostly covered with the invasive imported thorn-bushes. I know that if I were taking the same route a century or even several centuries ago, the landscape would not be very different. The Indian land has grown with its cultivators, and has stayed remarkably productive, after thousands of years of farming, while farmlands all across the U.S. give out after less than a century.

The land we cross is extraordinarily flat, with only a few small hills along the horizon. I am not used to this. I come from the Pacific Northwest, from a town where, in some places, I can see two high ranges, mountains surrounding me on three sides. Mount Rainier, the third highest mountain in North America, is barely two hours drive from my home. I’m not very fond of flatness. When I first went to visit Western Massachusetts, where I now go to college, we drove through the Berkshire Mountains to Williams College, David’s old school. I couldn’t believe that these were the “mountains” mentioned in all of David’s favorite college songs, insisting that mountains had to have glaciers! There are no volcanoes on the East Coast of the U.S., or in India for that matter (except for the Himalayas). What’s the fun of that?

Gujarat (Aliyah)

So I’m back from Gujarat. The Internet isn’t working, and the expert – Gandhi – won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. He’s in Delhi with Krishnammal and Jagannathan. They met the President of India there, who said he was very glad to meet them, and who had already read half of The Color of Freedom.

Gujarat was gorgeous. The floods that had delayed my visit had receded, although it was still raining, and life had mostly returned to normal. The countryside was an extraordinary shade of green, with paddy and sugarcane fields growing lushly, intermingled with trains, cows and water buffaloes and goats grazing along the roadsides. At Jyothibhai’s house in the little community of Vedcchi, the flowers were blooming all around in beautiful shades of red and pink and yellow. There were rosebushes beneath the laundry lines, and I was glad to see a familiar bloom. I wanted to take photos, but my camera batteries had run out and I hadn’t brought the charger!

In four days I never strayed more than a kilometer from the house. Malinibehn, Jyothi’s wife, has been ill for almost a year, and so Jyothi rarely goes anywhere. She had her 81st birthday on the 21st, while I was there. I spent the time reading, writing, and walking around the village. It was a fine holiday, though I did miss the Tamil food. I think I lost a bit of weight, though that might not be so much due to the food as to the fact that Jyothi and Malini aren’t so pushy about getting me to eat more, which I appreciate very much. The phrase “Jewish Mother” comes to mind, but “Indian Mother” would be much more appropriate. My own Jewish-raised Mom never particularly cared how much I ate, as long as I ate something.

Jyothi helped me a bit with the LAFTI history book, which it is now clear will not be done before I leave, mostly due to my own procrastination, at which I am a master. Another project for this cruise boat David’s mother is taking us on next month. I’m not looking forward to it. I look at a cruise boat as a giant floating hotel with no escape, and I hate hotels. This will, at least, give me something to do.

While I was in Gujarat, Medha Patkar called Jyothi, asking him to be at a meeting in Ahmedabad the same day, presumably on the issue of the Narmada Dam. He had to decline, of course; it would take him more than a day to get to Ahmedabad, and he couldn’t leave on such short notice. Apparently, none of the Gujarati Gandhians are on speaking terms with him anymore, due to his association with Medha. I guess she’s too much of an activist. Many Gandhians in their old age have gone into their own secluded centers and busied themselves with various constructive projects, or with nothing at all. Activists such as Amma and Appa, and even Jyothi, are definitely exceptions to the rule.

Jyothibhai narrated an anecdote about his first meeting with Jagannathan:

In the ‘60s, Jagannathan was president of the All-India Sarvodaya association, and he was going around to visit various Gandhian centers. He came to Gandhi Vidyapiht, in Vedcchi, a school at which Jyothi worked for a very long time, and met the president of the school. There was a program planned for a whole day’s visit. Jagannathan asked the president, “Where do you come from?” “From Valod (the nearby town),” the man replied. “Do you own land there?” “Yes, my brothers and I own some land.” Jagannathan further inquired, “I have heard, that in this area there is often a difference in wages between laboring men and women. Is that true?” “Yes, I pay one rupee a day to men and twelve annas to women.” (In the former, non-metrical system of India currency, there were 16 annas to a rupee.) At this, Jagannathan became very angry, and said, “If the leader of this center is participating in this injustice, there can be nothing worth seeing here.” He left fifteen minutes after arriving, and never returned.