Daily Life

There are some things we’ve noticed and some things we’ve learned as we try to fit in with the locals in India. 

First, never assume you are safe from vehicles.  Whether you are on the sidewalk, or walking past what seems to be a parked car, anything can and will mow you down at any turn if you’re not alert.  Just today I thought I was walking in a parking lot when I discovered it was really a street with stalled traffic, traffic that suddenly started to squeeze me in.  I moved toward the sidewalk but there were cars coming down it as well.  Not kidding.  I stayed in the street, because I liked my chances better there.

We’ve learned to expect that the security metal detectors in places like shopping malls and some hotels will always beep, loudly, in your ear as you pass, but no one will chase you down.  Some security guards at malls swipe you down with the metal wands, but they always beep and I’m always waved on. I’m hoping perhaps there is some other method of security. 

I’ve learned to gird my loins when going shopping because once I show some interest in actually purchasing something, the game is on.  Recently I bought new glasses and a new hairdryer and the game was the same. 3 or 4 clerks immediately swoop in and begin tossing merchandise from all corners of the store toward you.  A steady patter of  “How about this one?  Take this one, m’am.  This color is for you.” etc always accompanies the manic movement of the merchandise.  This is a result partially of the fact that there is such limited space in shops for displaying inventory that at least half of it is out of view, so they don’t want you to think they’re not ready to fill your need.  There is also the fact that there is a serious overflow of clerks, so much that many clerks may try to catch your attention at once, which sometimes makes me want to close my eyes and OMMMMM it all away. 

When you eat around Indians, they are going to either put food on your plate or try to force feed you unless they see you actively gorging yourself.  It’s just being polite, but I found the student who handed me 2 french fries when I introduced myself to her in the hotel restaurant just funny.  She nodded for me to eat them, so what’s a gal to do? Yum: cold, limp salt-free French fries….

Finally, the paper that is generated on a daily basis in this country is just out of control.  I leave you with this image from outside my office as a case in point.  My office is in a state educational administration office, and there are piles and cupboards full of disheveled paper filled with God knows what EVERYWHERE.  Some are tied together with string, some are very loosely bound into a kind of book, but they are ancient and there is no chance no one is ever going to look at them again.  There is a serious disconnect between our image of India as a technology leader and the low-tech proliferation of paper.  And ledger books. Before Divali S. was shopping for shirts and got a promotion that offered a coupon for January.  He had to buy his merchandise (on a very modern cash register equipped with a data base capability, no doubt) then take his receipt to another line where clerks were laboring to enter the coupons BY HAND into a ledger book.  Sometimes it blows my mind.

I'm in Delhi for two weeks with work, and today I was walking around their Central Market and smelled some roasting corn.  People all over the world have figured out how good corn tastes roasted on some coals.  There are also some very tasty looking home fries being cooked around town. As you can see in the picture, the vendors have figured out a very simple set-up for the street. 

It’s Wedding Season

Yesterday as I was going to the airport I saw several white horses highly decorated with red and gold traveling the highway with us.  I wondered if there was a parade I was missing somewhere, then I remembered: the wedding season started today. According to the Hindu calendar, there are certain very auspicious times to get married, and 10 days after the main day of Diwali begins the most auspicious time to get hitched.  Today’s Delhi Times had two interesting articles, one asking people to remember that many people wanted to get to their wedding on time, so don’t hold up traffic with their wedding processions, and another that began with this lead:  “More than 10,000 couples in the capital will be tying knot on Sunday and the number is expended to remain the same on Monday, owing to the auspicious three-day period that began Saturday.”   That’s a lot of wedding planners.

Indian weddings are the gold standard for opulence and extravaganzas; Parents save their entire lives to be able to afford the 5-day marathons of eating and pujas and traveling here and there to exchange gifts, etc.  I am stoked because last week I got an invitation to one such event.   [multi-paged invitation to the right is gorgeous just by itself]  I was worried that perhaps I would not be able to attend since I’m in Delhi for 2 weeks, but I’m flying back on the evening of the main event, and since the dinner begins at 8:30 “or so” and the actual ceremony doesn’t happen until midnight, I’ll be able to take in the whole thing.  I’ll be posting a report to be sure, if I can keep my eyes open until the vows are actual exchanged.  

Thanksgiving Tidings

Happy Thanksgiving!

There is always lots to be grateful for, and I ascribe to the camp that thinks it's a good idea to list and celebrate!  Here goes, in random order.
1.  Family:  It's sustained me throughout, but this year of flux has found my family stepping up and representing big time.  From support for our adventure to ways to stay connected across the oceans, it's been a comforting "boon" as they say here.
2.  Colleagues:  Present and Past:  Since we spend so much of our waking hours with them, it's always a bonus when you can enjoy them!  My Weber family continues to keep in touch, which I love, and I have some very valued colleagues here who have done many things, large and small, to make my move less crazy and my job easier.  To my boss in Delhi and the foreign service national angel, to my colleagues here in Jaipur,  dnhanyavad.
3.  My landlady.  She just rocks.  She sends me food across the lawn when she thinks I look tired (I can pull a very long face when I'm hungry.), and gave me the D.L. on just about everything I needed to know to get along here in Jaipur.  And she's great fun to be around, and makes me laugh.
4.  My driver/personal assistant/bookkeeper/personal shopper/cultural informant/life saver.  My days here would be far less stable without him around to say "Yes, M'am", to my every request. The cosmic score sheet will forever be tipped in his favor, I'm afraid.
5.  Everyone reading this blog who has sent me a note to just say hello, a huge thank you.  It helps me feel less disconnected from the supportive circle I am privileged to be a part of.
I'm happy to say there are more people to list than I have energy for at this early hour, so I will end with  a Thanksgiving poem written by Iowa City's own Marvin Bell.  I simply love the image this poem evokes for me.

Around Us
by Marvin Bell
We need some pines to assuage the darkness when it blankets the mind, we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly as a plane's wing, and a worn bed of needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind, and a blur or two of a wild thing that sees and is not seen. We need these things between appointments, after work, and, if we keep them, then someone someday, lying down after a walk and supper, with the fire hole wet down, the whole night sky set at a particular time, without numbers or hours, will cause a little sound of thanks--a zipper or a snap-- to close round the moment and the thought of whatever good we did.

All in a Day's Work

This pile of books was the result of this Saturday’s outing….not a bad day’s haul, and the majority of the titles were mine, for a switch.  I’m not sure if I’ve written about this before, but the cost of books here is obscenely low.  Not so low that we aren’t buying the books, mind you, just very low.  I worry a little about putting this in print because the Inscrutable Panda is coming to town in about a month, and she may need an extra piece of luggage when she leaves.

The best bookstore S has scouted in Jaipur is Rajat Book Corner, whose motto is  “Your Partner in Knowledge”.  Nice. It’s a very small retail space with quite a large quality inventory.  He is also just the person you want running a bookstore: he loves books and loves to talk about them. His organization system is a mystery to me, and I believe sometimes it’s a puzzle to him as well, but it suits him and if he can find the book, that’s all that matters.  He was talking about his crusade to get parents to have their kids read outside of school, because it’s not something thought of as beneficial.  We had no point of reference for that, as about 20 tubs in our basement at 345 Magowan contain children’s books we didn’t donate to the library, but are saving to read in our old age, I guess!  He is also the organizer of a free public library in Jaipur, with 5,000 titles, mostly children’s books.  Book lovers are passionate people, what can I say?

The owner’s crusades made me grateful yet once again for Prairie Lights Bookstore, its inventory and its staff, and the entire city’s attitude toward literacy and reading.  It has helped make two voracious readers out of our children, and fed our habits as well.  Thanks, P. Lights!  You were our favorite expenditure on the Quicken budget ledger, placed squarely under “heavenly entertainment.”  The ICPL was the other IC institution brought to mind during our conversation, and the cost there was free.  Well, almost.  We did manage to have some fees assessed pretty regularly for overdues, but we just considered it the cost of business in our family.  If you’re not finished with the book, it’s immoral to think of returning it, right?  That was our attitude anyway.

Thali at 4 Points Sheraton

Lunch Thali at Kanji, mainly a mithai (sweet) shop.
This was great and only 300 Rupees.  300 for all this food.

making a sweet, up to his elbows!

The finished product, beautiful to see.

After our successful foray to the bookstore we visited a favorite watering hole to indulge in another activity in which our family excels, eating.  Yesterday’s fare was a thali meal for me, and it was out of sight fantastic. Actually I had two thali meals this week (that I can remember) and I thought I should tell everyone that thalis are perhaps the perfect way to experience Indian food.  As the picture shows you, it’s a set meal of several dishes in small metal bowls on a round tray, with some regulars like dal, raita, and some rice or bread always 

included.  They have veg and nonveg (as carnivores are politely referred to here) and you can’t go wrong either way.  It’s a great way to try several of the dishes on the menu without getting a huge portion.  The one I got yesterday would have fed two people….oh wait, it did.  S. started staring at my meal as soon as it came, and you all know what comes next.  It was a great meal, but we missed our favorite waiter, who was down with a cold.  It just wasn’t the same without the incredible friendly face and attitude of our 4-Points Sheraton friend, but we’ll be back.  The coffee ice cream is reason enough to visit, but we’ve got several other tasty ones as well.

Con's Academy

This week I read two very interesting books on very different subjects.  First Salman Khan’s treatise on what is wrong with education and how his open source brain-child KHAN ACADEMY fixes many of today’s educational ills.  As a veteran educator, I usually steer clear of books written by non-educators about education’s woes.  Technically Salman Khan is now one of us, so that helps. Also, unlike many of his contemporaries who have a penchant for offering simplistic solutions to the complex issues of education, his ideas would actually benefit those who do NOT learn things at first pass as well as those who do. For anyone who is interested in education, technology, motivation or creativity, this is a fascinating book.  Equally fascinating is the story of how his materials’ rose to popularity and went viral (spoiler alert:  Bill Gates’ imprimatur on your product doesn’t hurt!)  I found myself writing down several quotes from his first 60 pages, which, coincidentally, deal with mastery learning, how education happens, and how to fill gaps in learning which he calls the “Swiss Cheese” problem.  Here are a few of the best:

“There is a balkanizing tendency to divide learning into separate subjects…”  And he doesn’t see it as a positive tendency, and I quite concur.  He talks about integrated curriculum aligning with current brain research that shows that neurons grow stronger when we make connections for students, not dividing lines. 

He says Khan Academy “...creates a context that gives free rein to curiosity.”  That's compelling rhetoric. He points out that we know that brain activity dips after 20 minutes maximum, but we still insist on the stultifying 50-minute lecture.  He is a strong advocate of mastery learning, which had a couple of heydays, but he thinks should return permanently because of the Swiss Cheese effect most student learning exhibits when non-mastery is tolerated.  He sites personal responsibility for learning as a reason to like Khan Academy’s approach, as well as self-paced learning, for the when, where, and tempo of the learning is defined by the learner.  As someone who benefited greatly from an English teacher taking me aside and giving me a self-paced advanced grammar book as a sophomore while the rest of the class continued diagramming sentences, I can say having someone realize you need your own pace is liberating and empowering. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough to gobble up the next grammar goodie.
He says everyone should…"have a healthy measure of skepticism and caution when looking at standardized test results” because of the one-time, moment in time nature of such tests, which echoed my mentor Pam E’s cautions.  Finally, two more quotes:  “You can standardize curricula, but you can’t standardize learning” and he refers to GPAs as a “blunt instrument at best” and asks the sage question of whether or not a person with a 3.2 GPA has less to offer the world than someone with a 3.6 GPA.  Again with the healthy skepticism.

I enjoyed this book partially because he agrees with me on so many issues (lucky him!) but also because he questions so many assumed premises in education that have no business being taken as fact.  His description of flipping the classroom left me wondering if we aren’t seeing a revolution in the making.  I know several school districts have adopted his materials (Des Moines, for example, I believe?) and he’s going global with his materials already translated into several languages.  Perhaps most importantly he makes a good case for how technology, when used wisely, allows a teacher to do more teaching.  That’s always a good thing.  This book is worth the coin. Also check out Khan Academy website to see if there is a course there just right for you.  It’s all free, all the time.

Second, Anash Kapur's sobering book India Becoming is one person's account of his voyage to America for college and after, then his return in the 90's to a very different India.  His book is written in parts, parts that parallel his emotional roller coaster at returning home and seeing such prosperity, then looking again and seeing how the prosperity has excluded the poor entirely and is robbing the country of it's natural resources (clean air for example) at an alarming rate.  And he come to speak about a real and omnipresent problem in India, its garbage.  As someone who has been forced to use air conditioning to try to stifle the stench of burning garbage outside her room, this section really hit home. It's almost as if the country has two personalities, one of the up and coming global power, and another that ignores the garbage in every street and the poor air quality they breathe.  He captures these two personalities well through protracted interviews with Indians from different walks of life and different generations.  You hear the fear of the old farmer for the loss of his livelihood as the real estate market gobbles all the land, the distress of urbanites who are on the one hand hungry for their piece of the luxury living pie and on the other hand stressed, tired, and missing the slower pace of their villages.  It's a troubling book, at points hopeful, and other points not so.  I would highly recommend this book as a great insight into the pros and cons of meteoric development.  And, thanks to daughter #1 for gifting me this for my birthday, along with my next read, Salman Rushdie's newest book. Back to the books!

Diwali Day Three

Last night we were invited to a friend's house for their family's Divali celebration.  It was a very enjoyable evening, first with the puja (religious ceremony) in front of their shrine (featured in the picture), then a great meal, followed by "crackers" of all volumes, then late night tea and coffee at a sister's home, and lots of great conversation sprinkled in between.  I have posted a set of photos for you to see the various parts of the puja, including a mini-video of the singing in front of the shrine.  We were up very late for us (after 1 a.m.) and the firecrackers lasted much longer than we did, and at 7 a.m. a neighbor began again.  There is  a heavy haze of pollution over the city because of all the crackers, which does make one question the quantity and quality of the firecracker experience.  All in all, the evening was informative and it was quite wonderful to be in great company with a family who opened their doors to us on such a special occasion.
Link to photos:  http://flic.kr/s/aHsjCQ42PG

Divali, Day 3

Divali Mubarik, everyone!  Not sure that's how you spell HAPPY, but that's how I remember it.  Last night S. and I ventured to the Old City to see the lights again in all their glory.  We weren't disappointed, as several large gateways were completed that we didn't see on Saturday, plus one jewelry store even had fresh flower garlands around its facade.  See if you can see which one it is on this photo batch:
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjCPh7Dm

Mr and Mrs. P. Cock having a dust bath

They say that hard work is its own reward, but I don't understand that.  I do know that yesterday while I was toiling away writing curriculum at our home, S called a peacock alert.  What transpired next felt like something straight out of one of our Planet Earth videos.  First one, then 3, then about 10 peacocks filled the backyard, scratching and bathing in the dirt around the perimeter of the wall.  There were babies and females, and one gorgeous male, which I kept waiting to open his feathers, but no luck.  However, my new camera zoomed in on what plumage he was showing off, and it's rather stunning.  That was my reward (or diversion) for putting in a full day's work on a holiday.
Tonight is the dinner party and we have some fancy Indian clothes to rock, so stay tuned for another Diwali special edition!

Diwali Celebrations

Happy Diwali!  Today is Day One of the 5 day “Festival of Lights”, the most important Hindu festival, and the Hindu new year. Each day highlights a different auspicious event.  One day is auspicious for getting new things for the home I think that’s today), etc, and the big deal is Tuesday.  Families gather and do pujas (religious ceremonies) together at home, have good food, etc.  People have been cleaning their houses for weeks because they have explained they must have a very clean home and many lights all over the home so that the goddess Laxmi, the honored goddess of wealth, will enter their homes and bring prosperity for the coming year.  As I type this I hear fireworks (or crackers, as they’re called here!) going off in about 3 different directions.  They’ve been booming for about 2 weeks and we’ve been promised at least another week of the festivities. It sounds like we need to find a very deep fox hole; they are that loud.

BTW, the phrase Deepawali, or Diwali is a reference to the Ramayana, and is the day upon which beloved Prince Rama returns from the jungle after 14 years of banishment due to a promise his father had made to one of his spiteful wives. During his time in the jungle, Rama braved many obstacles and defeated the antagonizing King Ravana. The night of the Prince’s return, there was no moon, so the people of his Kingdom lit all of their lamps and candles in order for Ram to be able to find his way home.
Friday Steve’s office had a party for Diwali, and some women made beautiful Rangoli at the entrance of the business.  Rangoli is a decoration on the ground, sometimes very elaborate, drawn with either colored sand or colored ground rice, or sometimes now even chalk.  [I actually bought some stickers of Rangolis that they were selling at a Diwali stall, along with some Laxmi footsteps that one is supposed to place at every door.]  They did a puja in front of a shrine to the 3 gods honored at this festival, Ganesh, Sarasvati (goddess of education) and Laxmi, goddess of wealth.  We had some food, they lit some very loud crackers and it was a good time. 

Last night we went with our driver for a drive around the old city after dark, because Jaipur is the most famous of all Indian cities for its light spectacle.  It did not disappoint.  There are competitions between the various bazaars and it was incredible, even though they were still building huge gateways and putting up more lights as we drove by. These lights made Christmas decorations in the states look like child play. Here is a link to more photos of lights, photos of the women making the Rangoli, and the last is a traditional sweets box Diwali gift, which our driver gave us before he left for his village. http://flic.kr/s/aHsjCN4UaF

Tomorrow (Monday) eve I’m going to try to convince S to go back to the Old City to see the completed lights. On Tuesday we’ve been invited to my colleague’s house for their celebration, and S. has some very handsome new Indian apparel to sport, so look for pictures of that as well.  It’s fun to be here in the festival season!  

It's a Good Day to be an American and an Iowan

WOOO HOOO!!!!! Congratulations, America!  You got it right, twice in a row.  And here’s a particular shout out Iowans.   Thank you for making us proud once again to be from Iowa, and not silly Missouri, Nebraska, or any of those surrounding red states. A special shout out goes to F. at 345 Magowan for all her hours of volunteering for the Obama Campaign in Iowa, and Abhas in NYC. 

To President Obama:  Congratulations. Keep the up hard work. Let’s work on education excellence this 4 years, please. As someone who recently had a health insurance application out right rejected because I had migraines, I am relieved for the nation that your health care bill will continue to be implemented.  Thank you for that. I’m also glad the Lilly Ledbetter bill is on the books, even though it seems like we shouldn’t need to tell employers that employees who do equal work should get equal pay.  Actually, Mr. President, if you want any advice this term, ask the elementary teachers of America.  We keep children at the center and common sense at the core in all our decisions.  Also, President Obama, I tip my hat to you for not running and hiding when you first took office.  I’ve never lived through a scarier economic time in our country’s history, yet you kept your cool and did what needed to be done, even though it wasn’t politically easy.  Please work on banking reform in the next 4 years as well, however, because I believe we are still as exposed as we were 4 years ago.   Also, let’s spend some time working on global climate change; ask any New Jersey citizen today if it’s a real and present danger. And immigration reform:  An idea so long overdue that even George W was onboard. ¡Ándale, Por Favor Señor Presidente! Let's make the people who feed this country full citizens, and capable of getting an education, please. Also push on some gun control, because our country resembles Dodge City more and more. Otherwise, spend some time with those kids, because they are growing fast, and take more time off, because you are getting some serious grey up top.   

I couldn’t be more pleased with the results, unless….wait. Oh, yes I could, if Obama were a WOMAN.    Next time, Democrats, PLEASE.  Her name starts with H and ends with illary, and she's my boss and she ROCKS.   But back to you, President Obama. Well done.  Good luck, and God speed.