taking leave

Right before we were to leave the village there were several significant events: the celebration of Shivjayanti (birth of the hero Shivaji); elections of representations to a regional agro-insurance coop; a religious holiday for Shiva, and a death. The first two of these were highly political and the last a matter of mournful observances. In the wake of all this, our departure was done efficiently and without much ceremony. This was a relief to me, as I recall previous leave-takings becoming prolonged and complex as various people tried to assert their right to play the main roles. As we said goodbye to our host, however, to my surprise her stoic face showed tears. I had not been especially close with her, at least in my mind. I held her hand as we walked to the waiting car, and thought of the many leave-takings she's experienced, the several deep sorrows in her life, and how these must come to the surface again at each goodbye.

With some people I myself had strong feelings, aware of the precariousness of existence, their fragile health and all the rest. One friend said 'come back soon next year' the way people say after Ganesh and Gauri have completed their annual "visit." In this part of India, Gauri is believed to be the sister of Ganesh, and so she comes to visit her brother during Ganesh Chaturthi in the same way a woman might go back to her mother's home from her marital village once a year or so. These daughterly visits are sweet-sad, especially for women who married young. Perhaps improved transit and cell phones has changed this, but on the whole, a woman saying goodbye to her daughter as she goes away again is likely to weep just a little.

So we smiled and touched and wiped a few tears and climbed into the car to the bus to another bus to more transit and eventually an airport, a few hours in Cairo's airport and back to Rome's airport. This time, though, the coronavirus news was making everyone nervous. We got on a train to Naples and spent a week getting acclimated to the damp chill and enjoying endlessly fabulous varieties of pizza and baba. oh, and of course a lot of history and architecture and art and all that. Then we went further south to Paestum and stops on the Amalfi coast (by train, bus) for more of the same.

One pleasant aspect of the Capaccio-Paestum area is that it is the home of fabulous bufalo mozzarella. It seems the origins of water buffalo in the Mediterranean are still debated, but the story we read was that they were introduced to Capaccio in the 19th century because the region was marshy and not good for much else. I was very eager to compare these animals to the ones I know in India, so we visited Barlotti, where we could check out the animals and taste the mozzarella. The animals are similar to the Indian ones but have more cow-like faces, and I was unhappy to see that the Barlotti people think it's fine for them to stand around in their own muck, which is something that would not happen in India, in part because people harvest the muck for other purposes. But the animals seemed healthy enough, and the cheese was delicious. photos will follow eventually.

The last leg of our Italian holiday continues with a swing through Sicily, after which, depending on world events and the wisdom of epidemiologists we may stay at home and out of circulation for a couple weeks. It's unlikely I'll post again here, so from now on it's back to email if you'd like to be in touch.

(Feb 21)

Today is Maha Shivratri, the annual 'big' version of a monthly day dedicated to Shiva. Most everyone fasts today. Fasting is very common here, though, so its not a big deal. Many people have one day a week reserved for a fast: Tuesdays for Hanuman, Fridays for Goddess (Lakshmi), and so on. It happens quite often that a woman will be cooking but not partaking, and on asked, she will say simply, it's my fast day. Fewer men seem to keep a weekly fast, which fits with the general assumption that women's religious practices are important for the whole family, while men's are generally for personal piety.

Fasting means abstaining from all foods made from grains (millet, wheat, rice) and dal, and several other core foods. People eat fasting foods instead, which seem to include mostly items that are not originally indigenous. These include peanuts, potatoes, yams, taro and tapioca. Fruits are also taken during fasting, but most people here eat fruits in small amounts. At our house this morning our breakfast snack consisted of roasted peanuts, deep-fried potato chips and fried white popcorn-sized puffs that I think were made with tapioca. At mid-day I went with a couple of women to the nearby Shiva temple to make an offering, after which the regular meal was replaced with an array of oily fried snacks, plus boiled sweet white yam, hot milk with sugar, and little tiny bananas. Green grapes and papaya were also waiting in the kitchen for later in the day. With such rich and filling snacks, even if a person might long for the ‘daily bread,’ fasting is certainly not a matter of hunger.

Yesterday in preparation many people went to the weekly market in Rahimatpur. We went too. The market clearly shows what is in season and what not. For example, not one ear of corn was evident, nor was there much cabbage, which predominates some times of year. Instead we saw a variety of beans and peas, green onions, gorgeous huge cauliflowers, little eggplants and many other lovely vegetables. Meat is generally not sold in markets like this - it is found at the places where the animals are butchered. It seemed to me that the market had fewer places taken by people selling natural remedies, and I spied only one person selling dried tobacco products for chewing or snuff.

The ride to and from Rahimatpur was predictably rough. Because there are more two-wheelers, demand has lessened for the private jeeps that squeeze people in for Rs10 a trip. That means the wait for these rides increases, because the drivers are unwilling to go unless they have a full load. On the way out we sat in the Jeep and waited for the minimum number for the driver to proceed. That turned out to be 10 in the back, 5 in the middle seat and 2 up front with the driver. I have no idea what the maximum might be, but I hope no more than 25. On the return there was a cluster of women waiting, but no vehicles. We were lucky enough to be offered rides on the back of a motorbike and a motor scooter by men heading to the village. I sat sidesaddle on the back of the scooter, the only way for someone in a sari to sit. Since I weighed twice as much as the driver, I had to be careful to sit still and centered so as not to overbalance the machine. For me, the best way to do that is to pay as little attention to the road ahead as possible, so as not to react inadvertently. We bounced along the washed out road dodging big trucks that took the entire width of the paved surface, and I again thought nostalgically of the days when people would walk or bicycle to Rahimatpur.

a little bird told me

Lately mornings in the village have been fresher, with less smog. It's hard not to feel happy in the cool early morning with birds singing and calling high and low. I stood on the upstairs roof and tried to record some of the soundscape, but the phone mic is designed to pick up certain sounds, so the playback sounds flat and strange. There was a male magpie robin singing away, a crow pheasant saying "goop goop" deep in some shrubbery, drongo, koel, mynahs, bee-eaters, various little ones flitting about, a coppersmith bird repeating the call it's named for: toop toop toop - just like a coppersmith tapping on a pot. High up in a tree a pond heron stood sentry. A kingfisher perched on a pole with her brilliant aqua back catching the sun. She was temporarily scared off by a pair of hoopoes (they have the best Latin name ever) who then dropped down to peck in the straw near the cowshed like a couple of chickens. Further out towards the river a tree shook and bounced with the weight of a family of langurs. Mixed into the soundscape were human noises as well: the clatter of someone washing steel dishes, the rhythmic thump of someone pounding laundry on a stone to loosen the dirt, and someone shouting across to another house. A puppy cried sadly, a milk buffalo grunted now and then. I stood there taking in the sounds as the sun slowly began to heat the cement roof. The heron flew off for its day of fishing. The langurs moved to a tamarind tree just a few feet away from the house (good thing there are bars on the windows!).

I was summoned downstairs because our hosts were leaving for the fields and the door needed to be latched from the inside. The door stands open to signal that people are home and to facilitate communication from house to house. I sometimes complain about all the shouting, saying grumpily that they must have been deafened by all the impossibly loud music at weddings. Whether that's also true or not, the loud talking is part of a network of communication among women that extends across the village. A woman walks past as she goes to the river for laundry, or to the mill with her grain, or to the temple with her offering plate, and along the way she exchanges greetings with women on their doorsteps bathing children, washing dishes, hanging laundry, shelling peanuts, sifting grain - where are you going? did you eat yet? where is so&so? did you hear about who is sick, who is taking exams, who went to visit her mother's village? did you get your field weeded? and so on. They speak loudly to include the woman sitting just inside preparing food in her kitchen. Perhaps also so that no one thinks they are sharing secrets. I suppose whispers, gossip and rumors get passed along this way, but on the whole it seems to be useful information. Shouting back and forth between houses is also ongoing: I'm going to the market, will you take the key and look out for the guy bringing milk? Hey, send my kid over, it's time to eat. What time are you going to the wedding? It's not as pretty as birdsong, but the functions are similarly social.

Houses in the old days were built like defensive forts with a big front door opening into courtyards, and multiple rooms around the courtyards for large patrilocal family groups. There might be several kitchens in such houses, depending on how well mothers-in-law and the wives of various brothers get along. In such houses, I imagine this kind of social exchange could happen at a lower decibel level, and with much less access to information passing by outside, unless someone chose to step in along the way to say hello. In those days, I'd guess the gatherings at river, well, mill and temple were more important for information sharing.

In the central parts of the village, the old fort-style houses are gone now, taken down in parts and sections, while new parts and sections have been built on. The trend was towards smaller family groupings in their own separate spaces. Lee tells me that trying to map these areas is confusing, because houses share walls, cowsheds and sometimes connecting rooms. Sometimes cowsheds are re-purposed into houses, and sometimes vice versa. Where one house ends and another begins is a social rather than architectural question. In the outer parts of the village houses are more likely to be free-standing and easier for the westerner to identify as single buildings, but even then there may be internal divisions. Last evening we visited in a relatively new cement house built outside the central village area along the road. It had one front door, one front room for sitting, eating, working, napping etc., but two kitchens, one for each brothers' wife. One household or two - a demographer's puzzle. What I wondered was, how do these women keep up with the village news living so far out from the center? It is certainly too far to shout.

(here are some of Lee's photos of birds, because there is no problem with informed consent)