Republic Day (Jan 26)

The day that the Constitution of India came into effect is not to be confused with Indian Independence Day, although in our village a lot of people slipped up and spoke of Independence Day instead. I am straining to remember the Republic Day events in the village 8 years ago, but no clear memories emerge. This year, though, there was a concerted effort in some quarters to celebrate the day and highlight the Constitution.

There are two important elements that some people wished to emphasize this year. One is that the Indian Constitution is largely attributed to the leadership and vision of B. R. Ambedkar, a jurist who studied at Columbia University as well as London School of Economics, and was an effective critic of Gandhi and orthodox Hinduism. It was Ambedkar who led a mass conversion to Buddhism for those oppressed by orthodox Hinduism. I am regularly disappointed at how few Americans even recognize his name, but must also warn that interested readers should check carefully what is posted and published about him, as there is much that is contested.

The second important element in this year’s Republic Day comes as a response to recent moves by Hindu nationalists, and that is to emphasize that the Constitution defines India as a secular nation. There was a time when this statement would be met with a shrug, but apparently this year is not such a time.

In the village our day began early with a walk down the dusty road to the village grade school. I stood with some teachers as the last of the children arrived. Scrubbed clean and in their uniforms, looking mild and vulnerable in the chilly morning, they stood quietly waiting for the order to assemble. The littlest children in the preschool play group clustered around their teachers, a few clinging to their saris. The popularly elected Head of the Village Council also had a small child clinging to her sari. She is the first woman to be elected Head, this having to do with complicated local party divisions and an affirmative action program from the national government. She strode onto a small stage in the schoolyard, followed by the teachers. The students were called to assemble, something they practice regularly. There was a short drill (attention, salute, at ease), the unfurling and salute of the flag, the singing of the anthem, the recitation of the Constitution’s preamble (it includes the word “secular”), a few words from the Head, and then it was time to hurry further down the road where the High School students went through the same drill, longer and more practiced, and the School Head gave a talk on Ambedkar and the Constitution. Then we all trekked back to the center of the village for the village-wide assembly. This time in addition to the pledge, anthem, preamble etc., various groups of children performed traditional and patriotic dances. One little child was placed before the mic and induced to gulp out a memorized speech in English, but it was so rushed and confused that I couldn’t work out what she was saying.

Eventually all the formalities were done, and many people drifted home, but there was yet another item on the day’s agenda. For reasons not explained to me, the village had also scheduled a village-wide meeting with the elected officials, something that is done four times a year these days (it used to be less frequent). A woman said to me dismissively, it’s just a lot of announcements of what jobs were completed, and who did not complete their work. Lee stayed around to listen for a while, as they debated, among other things, what to do about abandoned public bathrooms. The public privies had been built years ago in an effort to wean people away from using the fields and river, but people didn’t like them and anyway no one wanted to keep them clean, so they were almost never used. Eventually people started building and maintaining private ones anyway. Several other issues were brought to debate, some apparently contentious, but eventually the meeting was ended and the Village Head could go home to cook and serve a late midday meal to her husband and family. Affirmative action does not mean that the women are released from any of their regular work.

inter-dependence (Jan 22)

Since we are only visiting for short periods, we have arranged to eat meals with people rather than try to organize something more complicated. Last time we were here for a longer spell, we organized a gas stove so we could do some of our own cooking, but even then it's complicated because we aren't part of a farming family, so we don't have grain, or easy access to vegetables or anything else. Even though people do rely on the market more and more, most houses still have their own stocks of grain and other basics grown on their own fields (or swapped with neighbors). Sometimes I feel uneasy about being hosted day after day (although we reciprocate in other ways), but it is clear that people love to feed us. We are flooded with invitations to eat. When we eat with people they are eager to know what we like and don't like. They watch me fondly as I awkwardly scoop food into my mouth, and they urge us to have more and always, to eat slowly (there's plenty).

Over a pleasant meal with a retired teacher and his family recently, the conversation shifted to the old days. The teacher, who is a bit over 70, remembered that in his youth there was no electric lights, no bottled gas and no batteries. Cooking was done on old-fashioned wood stoves, the smoke seeping into the house rafters to fumigate any bugs. People ate bhakri, not chapati, and rice was a special treat. Meat was rare, but there was plenty of milk and yogurt. Money was scarcely used in the village itself, as there was nothing to buy. People used money in the market town some 5k away to buy tea, sugar, oil, cloth and some farming necessities. Lamps were kerosene, or just wicks floating in oil. Water was fetched one heavy jug at a time from wells. People generally didn't wear shoes or western dress. Men wore white cotton, and saris were also of cotton. Modest houses were built out of handmade mud-straw brick, and more substantial ones with stone and brick, huge roughly hewn tree trucks wedged across as roof beams. No tiles, no glass. No one had a telephone. Newspapers and post were brought to the village by bicycle. Transport was by ox-cart or on foot, with some families having big black bicycles like the postman. Our teacher didn't speak much about it, but he likely also remembers periods when food was not just very plain, but scanty.

How much has changed! Motorcycles and cars proliferate, and because of them, people are more willing to leave their family compounds in the middle of the village for larger new houses built on their farm land, creating a kind of village sprawl. The new houses are made of brick and cement. They have shiny hard tile floors, counters for stand-up cooking, glass windows, indoor bathrooms. Kitchens have running water, gas stoves, electric mixers and refrigerators. The core diet is supplemented by a greater variety of foods. Snacks like pau bhaji, wada pau, samosas, popcorn, sweets and cookies have proliferated. Refined sugar is everywhere, spooned heavily into tea and various sweet dishes at meals. There are several shops and stands in the village selling snacks, sugar, tea, soap and plastic toys. There are fat people in the village now. Children go to school for more years, and travel further for advanced schooling. A few have even gone abroad.

Obviously, one change was that India gained its independence in 1947 (about the time our teacher host was born). In this region, though, it was a canal that was opened in the early 1980s that brought complex, far-reaching change. With the canal came the opportunity for irrigation and cash-cropping, primarily of sugar cane. Wealth and mobility, in concert with changes to the national economy, brought in new products and conveniences, expanded education for boys and girls, improved mortality, allowed later marriages, smaller families, and so on.

Through all of this, certain principles of village organization stayed stable. This has been the topic of Lee's research over the years. Even with a focus on what has not changed, however, it is impossible not to notice something new every day.

Lately I’ve been noticing the dogs. The village has had dogs as long as people can remember. Generally they are a lean hound-type animal, usually yellow or black. In the old days dogs were one useful part of the ecosystem, along with feral pigs, because they cleaned up carrion and feces. Naturally, people tended to think they were disgusting, and kept them at a decent distance by shouting “harrr, haarr!”

These days I regularly hear people shout “harrr, haarr” on our lane, mostly because the dogs have become much more friendly. Bigger, too. Dogs have a powerful ability to appease humans and compel us to like them. They start as puppies, standing there with head cocked and eyes raised, and then tumble after their target with such innocent hope that many cannot resist. People who are no longer in want themselves give the dogs scraps. Children will sometimes put a collar on a dog and give it a name. A beautiful big broad-skulled guy convinced the cluster of houses where we stay to accept him. Someone named him Tippo (I'm not sure - possibly a swipe at Tipu Sultan?). He patrols the area and warns away other dogs, stiffly escorts any unknown people to the door to make sure they are ok, and welcomes known people with wiggles and a smile. When he is hungry, he comes to the door and stretches his head inside with an inquiring glance – likely as not someone will toss him a quarter bhakri to eat.

Other houses I’ve visited let cats in and feed them scraps or milk. I watched one family lay out a still-alive mouse they had trapped for the cat to take. Neither the dogs nor the cats welcome being touched – they are a grubby lot generally, and independent, but they appreciate human cooperation around food.

In many houses, birds are also fed. People hang a few bundles of millet seed for the sparrows, saying they hope this will keep them out of the fields (not a chance). Others sprinkle rice leftovers or crumbled bread. Mynas, parakeets and other birds prefer to keep a safer distance, but sparrows, like dogs, have evolved to live close to humans. They hop in and out of houses freely since windows are generally open. Their confidence is endearing. We humans seem to take a basic pleasure in feeding others, whether dogs, birds or visiting Americans.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Yesterday Lee and I walked through parts of the village where specific groups of people who are not from the dominant Maratha caste have their houses. As we visited and caught up on what was new (and not new), I thought about how to explain this situation to my American friends. At the moment, the best I can do is to recycle what I wrote back in 2011 when staying in a different house in this village:

This morning the daughter-in-law wasn’t pounding laundry as usual on the door step. When she handed me our mid-day meal she told me it was good I had been inside, too. ‘Why?’ I wondered. She took on the exact tone she’d used yesterday to tell me about a cobra that had appeared last year behind the house after some floods: a thrilled horror lightly tinged with the satisfaction of knowing she was actually safe. Stretching her eyes wide, she said she’d stayed inside because of Pardhi. I repeated the word, puzzled, not recognizing it. Yes, she nodded with excitement, Pardhi! but when I asked what it meant she was silent, staring at me with a clouded look, disappointed that I couldn’t immediately share her shock of distaste and maybe a little ashamed to have to explain it. Since she couldn’t come up with any words of explanation, I asked Lee. Pardhi, he said, are a kind of people stigmatized as mendicant and criminal. Lee then asked her to say exactly what about the Pardhi had kept her huddled in the back of the house, and she said “scary!” but laughing, as if their presence was actually exciting. I looked out the window and saw nothing, but later I saw people walking away from the neighboring household compound. The young man had a strange pompadour of tan bleached hair. He was otherwise dressed in the typical hand-stitched shirt and trouser of villagers his age, not, as I half expected, in the dirty orange of a religious beggar. He was closely followed by an older woman in a cheap sari, again nothing remarkable. Straggling behind so that they had to stop and look back for her was a teenage girl trying to keep her grip on a gunny sack of about 30 pounds of what was probably grain. The girl looked fresh and pretty, smooth hair, powder on her face, wearing a panjabi suit that any country college girl might wear. What was so frightening about them I could not see.

I could understand a reluctance to be seen at home when beggars come, because quite a few had come by during the village festival week, playing instruments or enacting wild holy man roles, or in the case of one woman, just calling “give some bhakri!” I myself shrank back into our rooms from those people, not sure of the level of charity expected of me, and confident that I could leave it to my neighbors, who did indeed step out and give something. So if those beggars weren’t frightening, what made the Pardhi special?

The Pardhi are one of a number of stigmatized groups categorized by the British as “criminal tribes.” This codification in one stroke damned the entire community by denying them the right to most occupations and making them the first choice for police attention after any crime. Special laws and restrictions are attached to them, making it difficult for them to buy property or make any living except in begging or the gangsterism that they are already assumed to practice.

The little reading I've done on the eponymous “casta” of Spain and Portugal as well as the murky origins of European racism help explain how they could embrace the idea that whole classes or communities could be defined by a single rank, occupation, type of clothing, physical characteristics and mentality. Because it was not just the Pardhi who were defined in this way in India. In a twisted pseudo-liberal condescension to “native custom” the British defined every single group by occupation and characteristic, and insisted that every person be identified by only one such category and be defined and treated in law and policy according to the ascribed characteristics. Laws were built up allowing certain groups rights and excluding others based on these categories, controlling access to residence, education, employment, places of worship, even food and water.

Nowadays it is popular in some circles to assert that “wily” Brahman advisors convinced the gullible British of this incredibly rigid idea of caste. But I doubt this claim for two reasons. First, it stinks of exactly the same simple-minded thinking: Brahmans are usually ascribed the characteristics of greediness, cunning, literacy, and the intellectual capacity to advise rulers. Second, I haven’t been convinced by historical work that Brahmans or any powerful class in India before the European contact actually believed that castes were or should be limited to specific occupations or psycho-social characteristics.

This is a little tricky, so let me explain: most caste groups are associated with occupations, and a few of them even have caste names that are the same as an occupation (Smith, for example), but this did not mean (and I don’t think people believed that it meant) that all Smiths must work as and only as smiths. And, most castes have names that are not associated with occupation, like Jones. In this village there are Smiths who work as smiths, but there are many Smiths who do other work and say that this has always been the case in their family. Similarly, there are people who are not Smiths who also do the smith work. This is true of almost all occupational groupings.

I need to sort out one more category aside from occupation that is associated with caste. That is the special ritual chores performed by certain representatives of the caste for the village as a whole. For example, the Pujari people are responsible for bathing and dressing goddess idols, stitching leaf plates and similar tasks in support of rituals, and for this villagers give them an annual donation. The work and its rewards are divided among a set of Pujari families according to a rotating schedule. But this is not their occupation – they are farming crops just as the Smiths, the Joneses and almost everyone else in the village is doing (in our village even the Brahman family farms).

Somehow the British, with or without Brahman connivance, came to combine their ideas of race and class with the fact that some castes had occupational associations or special ritual functions in villages, to build up the idea of caste into an extremely rigid and restrictive system, which they reinforced with policies that ended up over time creating what they had imagined to exist. The western example that comes to my mind is the the way various European laws banned Jews from owning agricultural land (or in some cases, any land), which funneled them into trading and banking, which in turn was held against them as a racial stereotype.

Most westerners are taught that caste is an ancient tradition documented in ancient scriptures laying out four varnas by which all Hindu groups are either categorized or, in the case of untouchables and non-Hindus, delimited. Without going far into the passionately, violently contested issues here, let me just put in doubt the claim to a historical basis for actual practice (rather than in a scripture laying out an ideal) of varnas. The idea of four varnas exists in ancient scripture and is held as gospel by many, but has almost no practical (non-ideological) reality in lived-in India. I might have to repeat that sentence, because it will have been drowned out by the howls of people who have taken varna as pure fact for most of their lives: there is almost no lived-out, real-world, practical, social (non-ideological) reality to the concept of the four varnas. By this I mean that people do not arrange any aspect of their daily life based on varna. Varna exists as an idea, but not as a sociological reality.

Maybe I've asserted this in an overly strong way. Of course ideas do drive practical action at times. The people excluded from society with justification by the varnas (generally categorized as untouchables) certainly noted a practical effect, but it's arguable whether it was varna that was being applied or other more specific prejudices against those groups. Brahmans generally could be said to have lived by and made use of the ancient scriptures in their own practices, but that exception emphasizes my point, that these days it does not organize how most people actually live. We can add the corollary that while varna has almost no practical reality in organizing social life, it is reified and used regularly to justify and motivate various kinds of political action. In other words ancient scripture does serve some people as the ideological basis for claiming that certain sets of modern people can be mapped on to varna hierarchy, and to justify maintaining it. For understanding the ways of life in this village, though, we can safely ignore varna. It’s a red herring.

The practical category that we’re concerned with is jat, a generic word that people also use when talking about male jat, female jat, or animal species, or even American jat, German jat, etc. It is best translated as ‘kind’ or ‘type,’ but because those words don’t have strength in English, we use that horrible word that draws with it all sorts of deterministic concepts, ‘caste.’

Recently I was reading through a 19th century British report on caste in which the author sheepishly explained that there really isn’t an exact term or concept for the European idea of caste in Indian languages, but it can be roughly mapped on to varna (an ideal from ancient scripture) and jat (kinds of people, like the Smiths and Joneses, including, by the way, many jats of people who are excluded from the Hindu varna system). In other words, he was admitting that the British were not starting from observation of “native tradition,” but were applying their own ideas (and that of other Europeans attempting to master India) of race, class and caste right from the start. (Wilson, John. Indian caste. Bombay: Times of India office, 1877. online through google books. p.12. Academically minded should see also Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).

It’s important to remember that unlike the idea of varna, which Brahmans used to map out the entire extent of Hindus, jats have no particular structure or borders. There are dozens and dozens of jats in India; they have shifted names and identities over generations, they vary by location, they don’t add up into a single discrete set, and they cannot be placed on a single scale or ranking relative to each other. It’s frequently asserted that jats are “subdivisions” of varna, thereby making varna be the main concept and jats subordinate, but actually jats have an independent social reality.

It would be more precise to suggest that ancient scripture used varna to categorize existing jats. Certainly the British did. Working from their own concepts of race and their political need to organize and rule huge populations, the British authorities concluded that jats could be thought of as racial groupings (fixed, heritable, associated with specific physical and psychological traits), that were tied to occupations, and that could be ranked in a scale of moral and ritual purity. All of these assertions are mostly incorrect, but linked well enough to ideology that many people find ways to justify them even today.

I don’t want to imply that jats were created by the British. They existed and exist as named kin groupings into which people are born. Each person is thought always and only to belong to one jat, which is the jat of their parents. Obviously for this to be maintained it is necessary that people marry within their jat. This marriage rule is upheld all across India, sometimes at the threat of honor killings (a man recently murdered his own daughter in a village not too far from here for planning to marry outside their jat). The marriage rule is also occasionally rejected, particularly by urban people, Brahmans, people associated with the military, and various categories of rebels, free-thinkers, and liberals. But the riveting of jats to occupations, the insistence that they are the basic or only structure of Indian society, the idea of inherited mentality, and the legitimization of policies and laws defining and justifying inequality among jats – those ideas were built up under the British, and Independent India has carried on with many of these concepts and policies.

Because jats do not fall into a simple hierarchy, modern mega-categories (“Scheduled Tribes” “Scheduled Castes” “Backward Classes” “Other Backward Classes” etc.) were created on which to build policy. The lumping of jats is hugely political, often violently so, as these categories effect rights and access to education, employment and power. Even the question of which jats are considered to fall under the relatively simple category “Brahman” is contested. Jats undergo fusion and fission over time, and they vary in identity and prestige and power from one place to another, and they end up getting classed as BC in one state and OBC in another. The result is an astounding political mess. It is telling that our family's daughter-in-law could not even try to explain to me that Pardhi were a particular type of people, in fact found herself apparently embarrassed enough that she couldn’t characterize them at all or explain why she was “scared.” She had first hoped that I would immediately recognize the term and what it meant to her, but when I did not turn out to share that knowledge, she rightly assumed that I would also not understand her disgust. She intuited that I, as an American, would not see the difference that she sees. This in itself is a small step forward, because there are many people who will assume that I know exactly what they mean, and when I question them will explain “…like your Negros” or if we’re talking about “tribal” people (people who are not considered part of the varna system), “…like your Red Indians.” Such comments leave me, a White American, embarrassed in turn. After all, the US racial system was built on British and European concepts too. I know White Americans who would refuse to answer the door to an unknown Black man. Humbled, I say only, “yes, both of our countries have much to overcome.”

A more typical day (Jan 18)

After our arrival, we are settling into a more regular routine. This day, like most days here, begins before dawn as women go outside to start small wood fires and heat water. Some use big pots, and others use samovar-like jugs. The water is for bathing. Most people start going to toilet and heating bathwater around 6am. Those who need to get somewhere might start earlier. Toilet and bathing are always the first acts of the day because there’s this general sense that overnight in bed (not to mention toilet) one accumulates uncleanness that needs to be bathed away, particularly before any actions that require purity such as prayers or meals. Toilets these days are generally latrines kept near each household area, and for the most modern houses, inside. For bathing, the hot water is poured into a bucket, mixed with enough cool water to be comfortable, and taken to a bathing space (a little room with a drain, or just a discreet, screened off location). With a little steel pot or plastic pitcher, the bather scoops up the warm water and pours it over head, shoulders, etc., then soaps up, then rinses in the same way. It is a delicious feeling to scoop big waves of warm water over one’s body – much more satisfying than the sprinkles of an American shower. In this chilly season (it gets down to 50F at night), a hot bath feels especially good.

There is a trade-off for the pleasure of a hot bath, though, which is smoke. Nowadays most people cook most of the time with gas cylinders, but still, almost every household in a village that has grown to approximately 600 households is burning wood (accumulated twigs, sticks, even the roots of harvested sugar cane will do) outdoors every morning for baths. In addition, people burn off weeds and rubble in the fields, and worse, they burn trash. The result is a stinging smoky haze that doesn’t ever quite dissipate. This time of year is known for bright blue skies and crisp air. People say you used to be able to see surrounding hills 15-20 kilometers away. No longer. To me it is odd that while people complain about many aspects of village life, the smoke is rarely mentioned. I am feeling more hopeful about this than in the past, however, because several houses now have solar hot water heaters on their roofs, an old technology that I recall from decades ago in parts of the Middle East but for reasons I don’t know have been extremely slow to take off here.

After bathing, the rest of the morning unfolds. Most people have a snack and tea soon after bathing and before getting on with the day's work. What is meant by "tea" here is made by adding strong black tea leaves and spoon after spoon of sugar into boiling water, adding creamy buffalo milk before bringing it to a boil once more. It is strained into small cups not unlike espresso. I don't guess the caffeine content is very high, but the sugar will keep a person going for hours. Then it's off to work. For many women that means the start of a round of childcare, dish washing and laundry, and then next, preparations for the midday meal. These days many women have access to piped water, and can do the washing right on their doorstep. Some still carry the dishes and laundry to a well or creek for washing.

Piped water, privy toilets, gas stoves - these are improvements I can celebrate. Some other improvements seem more to be about imitating models of middle class living on TV. A village man we ate with today is not only building what will be the highest house in the village, but plans to have a dining table with chairs, and gas-heated hot water (I pause to think about this change, how within my own memory gas cylinders were rationed). Other changes include vehicles: in the past 15 years, the number of cars and trucks owned by villagers has exploded. Lee remembers when even motorbikes were rare, and most people either shared a tractor or did their plowing with animals, but now there are hundreds of motorbikes all over the village, and dozens of tractors. Some of the motorbikes are even owned and driven by young women. The reason for all this rapid change is simple: irrigation and sugar cane. That topic will wait for a later time, though.

Some issues remain, of course. Yesterday Lee and I walked with friends out to their fields to check on their irrigation. They have an electric pump submerged in a huge open well that drives water about half a mile away to their plot of mixed sugar cane, millet and chickpeas. The pump was working well, and so we sat in the shade as the water slowly spread down the rows. Now and then our friends would go shove the dirt around to direct the water into the next row. But then, unexpectedly, the power went out. The unreliable power grid is a frustration to farmers here, but so far solar-powered pumps have had too many other obstacles to implement.

Mid-day meal is one of two meals eaten each day, the second one coming after dark. Meals here are generally based on chapati (made of ground wheat and oil) or the more traditional bhakri (made of millet flour and water). Typically there will be a dish of dal soup into which the bread can be dipped and soaked, and one of any number of vegetable side dishes. As a kind of second course there might be white rice onto which the rest of the dal soup (or other vegetable) can be poured. I've just given you the crudest of pictures - actual meals are quite varied and can include sweet dishes, fried things, etc. Meat (mutton, chicken or eggs) is not eaten by everyone, but those who do usually eat such meals at most once a week. All meals are served on large steel plates, one per person, with the dal and side dishes in small steel bowls. The woman of the house stands by to serve extra helpings as needed. There is some etiquette to these family meals, but nothing fussy. In the course of the meal, the host is sure to urge people to eat slowly. I'm not sure if this is mostly meaning "enjoy it," or, more likely, "there is plenty, don't worry."

After the meal, people like to rest if they can, and then the afternoon cycle of work, visiting and other activities begins. There's an evening meal not very different in format from mid-day. I haven't mentioned all the other sporadic activities that can fill a day (such as, just now I'm hearing the rolling drum beat that is likely coming from a women's vow ritual at the temple), but writing about those will wait for another day.

Speak sweetly (Jan 14 -16)

I had certain doubts about coming back to this Maharashtrian village after 8 years. What stumbling Marathi I managed to learn has receded into half-remembered phrases. My speech is out of sync in conversation, all blurts and mumbles. Even in past years my body wasn't well adapted to long spells sitting back-straight and cross-legged, eating with right hand only, bathing and toileting in the squatting position, or wrapping a sari. I can tolerate being a figure of amusement, but I don't want to embarrass or disappoint people.

As it turned out, our arrival itself inconvenienced many of our hosts and friends. The usual way to get to this village from Pune is to go to the Swargate bus stand and get on a State Transport bus to Satara. The bus route used to follow the Pune-Satara road past an old "tank" or water reservoir, up and over a steep set of hills on some of the scariest hairpin turns with impossibly steep edges I've ever experienced, made worse by the knowledge of the regular deadly accidents there. The busses themselves are ancient rattling things, banging along with motors so loud (and hot) that it is only possible to shout. Even though I knew that a divided road and tunnels had been completed, shortening the drive by an hour, I was still dreading that part of the trip. Worse, on arrival in Satara we would have to find a local bus to the village gate, and these have become nearly impossible. This is not because of the terrible state of the roads in that area (they are terrible!), but because the number of people, mostly college students, making daily commutes to Satara has multiplied by ten, while the number of bus runs remains the same. Thus each bus from the Satara station, as soon as it is announced, is mobbed by a hundred or so urgent young people with sharp elbows desperate to squeeze in and not showing an ounce of respect for their elders, nor to extra-large size foreigners carrying luggage. Because of this, I was very glad to learn that we could take a train to Rahimatpur and then arrange local transport from there.

Indian railways are rightly famous for their traditions and impressive capacity to haul around millions of people. They are well documented, so I won't go into any details. We felt a satisfying sense of accomplishment in getting through their webpages to purchase tickets and reservations online, avoiding the usual long wait and confusing wrangle at station ticket window. What we didn't know, though, was that work was being done on the Bombay-Pune leg of the tracks. This resulted in a delayed start for our train, and that delay meant that the train had to give way to all the scheduled trains along the single-track portions of the route. In the end, what should have been an easy 4-hour ride that passed the scenic Jejuri pilgrimage site ended up being an 8-hour journey in the dark. It was fine for us, because we were sitting quietly in a nearly empty train. Most people had better information than we, apparently. One of our fellow passengers had flown in to Pune that day and hoped to continue his journey to Kolhapur. He said that on learning of the initially announced delayed start, he had hurried over to the Swargate bus stand only to find that no busses were running because there had been yet another accident on the Pune-Satara road. I thought - I'm glad I'm on the train. Our hosts, however, were badly inconvenienced. They had been eagerly awaiting us, and the women had prepared an elaborate meal. As it got later and later, and each call to us brought news of only the slowest progress, they sadly ate the food that wouldn't keep and packed away the rest. Some of it was served the next day and the day after, but the disappointment couldn't be completely erased.

If our arrival was muted with disappointment, the next day was bright with welcoming joy. It was the holiday of Makar Sankranti. The main elements in practice for this village are two-fold. One is that everyone goes around to everyone (within certain communities, that is) and offers them "til gul" (sesame sugar candy) while saying 'take this sesame sweet and speak sweetly' (In Marathi this rhymes). It's like an annual reset for any relationships that might have soured. Children will offer respect by touching the feet of their elders and getting a blessing, and women anoint each other with haldi-kumkum. I enjoy this practice. Married women keep little pots of vermilion and turmeric powder on the ready for this exchange, which is also done at the end of visits. The pigments are also used to anoint deity images and items to be offered to deities. Make eye contact with your counterpart, slip off your sandals, pull your sari tail over your head (if you are traditional). Each gently pick up a dab of color and mark the bridge of the other's nose or a little higher. Step back and smile. The exact technique (order of colors, which fingers, how much where on the face) depends on regions, families and individuals. I love that quiet moment of smiling, slightly holding breath (so as not to blow the powder about) and the quick, intimate touch. The second element is for several women of each family to go to a temple and there construct offerings made up of betel leaves with little bits of rice and coconut and various other symbolic items. These are then tucked one by one into the lap of a senior fertile woman in the family by the other women, anointing her with haldi-kumkum and saying a blessing. The woman eventually takes the pile of offerings and delivers them from her sari to the deity.

My participation in the temple was happily welcomed, and lots of people got the chance to say hello, welcome me back after 8 years, and pile on the pigments. Some got enthusiastic and rubbed it into my hairline and part, too. My hands got sticky passing sugar pellets back and forth (til gul has gotten expensive, so most people were using little white sugar pellets instead).

Just when I was about to drop from all the bustle and smiling, we were tugged over to a different temple to sit in the VIP plastic chairs for an evening performance by a woman who impersonates historical figures, with the theme of how mothers suffer and contribute to the nation, based on one historical figure. It was very, um, dramatic....Histrionic, you could say. I watched a little child of about two standing up by her seated mother, staring with huge eyes in wonder and worry at this person in glittering garb gasping and sobbing emotively on the makeshift stage.

After all of this we went to the house of close friends for a big meal of puran poli (imagine soft chapatis stuffed with sweet paste and dipped in sugary milk) balanced by a very spicy chili broth. Walking home in the dark from the celebratory meal, we continued to stop along the way to kick off sandals, pull up sari tail and exchange little pigmented blessings. By the end of that first full day back in the village, I was glowing with the simple pleasure of appreciating each other, and rather heavily pigmented. Take this sweet, speak sweetly.

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