Tag Archives: India

good reads and time-wasting projects for lazy unproductive people

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The best part of having a couple of bad weeks of teeth-and-jaw-pain is not feeling bad about doing the things you most enjoy to the exclusion of almost all else. Reading in my case. I often put holds at the library on some of the newly published books, and wait my turn to read them. Sometimes, as happened recently, they all seem to become available at the same time. I was reading the new book about the Duchess of Windsor THAT WOMAN, when suddenly SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, Anne Lamont’s new book written with her son Sam, came up. I read reasonably fast, but not that fast, and besides, there are all kinds of other things to interfere in my schedule. I decided all I could do was carry on, read as fast as I possibly could and hope it worked out.

Then I fiddled away an hour and a half at the library while Hubby attended a meeting there. Have you ever noticed how some things just seem to call out to you only, so loudly you can’t possibly resist? Like Oreo cookies for one. And books. With so many books all around, how could I resist picking up another  to have a look at while I waited? Bad mistake.  By the time we left, I had another book checked out–now I had three books I needed to finish in three weeks! THAT WOMAN, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, and HINDI BINDI CLUB.

I was already well into THAT WOMAN (by Anne Sebba). I had read quite a bit of books about Wallis Simpson, beginning in the late 1950s with her own autobiography (1956), THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS, so I already had an idea of who this Mrs. Simpson was. Social climber, right? I thought so then. I find that reading now, at 70, as opposed to reading about her when I had barely reached the age of majority, gave me quite a different take. I plead guilty to falling for all the hype about this “poor relation of a southern bourgeois class,” but by the time I finished this book, I’d changed my mind. At least I’d decided that no one except the Duke and Duchess themselves will ever know the truth, and they’re not talking. What seemed to be true isn’t necessarily. Depends on viewpoint, and mine had changed a lot the past 50+ years.

I remembered a taped interview of Martha Gelhorn I’d seen a few weeks back–after I watched the HBO movie about Gelhorn and Hemingway. In fact I’d viewed her through the same lens I’d used to look at Mrs. Simpson. I wished I could see or hear her to see for myself. That’s what led me to find the archived video interview with Gelhorn herself on YouTube (26 minutes). She may have started off hanging onto the coattails of Ernest Hemingway, but she sure learned to make her own way by the time that interview was done.

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear what the Duchess really sounded like? I thought I remembered seeing the two of them on 60 Minutes once. Maybe I could find that, leading me to still another online search that turned up a fascinating BBC broadcast from 1970. For about 48 minutes The Duke and the Duchess together discuss their lives, expressing opinions on modern youth, smoking, the Establishment and the role of women in society. The duke speaks candidly about his lack of a conventional job in the working world, and shares memories of his royal family. Makes me glad I wasn’t born royal. The question came down to Duty to family and country, or the right to love and marry the one who makes you happy, and we know what he decided. Who can say he was right or wrong? For sure the Monarchy under  King Edward VIII (and Wallis?) would have been far more modern than it was under King George V and Queen Mary or, for that matter, the present queen Elizabeth II.

On to Anne Lamont’s new book written with her son, Sam, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, which is her take on becoming a grandmother and Sam’s on becoming a father at 19. Like all Lamont’s books, for me thi was not a disappointment. What she brings to her writing is the feeling that she’s just like the rest of us, living from day to day trying to make sense of it all, looking for the answers when we don’t even know the right questions to ask. I especially enjoyed the several chapters (she hesitatingly spent away from her grandson) as she accounted her visit to India. She said it all the way I wish I could have. I’d recommend anyone who wants or plans to visit India to read it before you go, if for nothing else, then for the advice about how to respond to the deluge of beggars, not to mention the guilt you feel for having so much when so many poor and uneducated people there have little or nothing.

Well, now that I’d heard Martha Gelhorn, and Wallas Simpson and the Duke speak, my inquiring mind needed to know what Anne sounded like, so off I went to find her. Here she is in a video taped interview with her son. At just under an hour it’s a tad long, but I fast-forwarded through parts of it. When I was finished I wanted to move to California and become her neighbor.

Two down, one to go; it was time to pick up the impulsive pick from the library, a debut novel from 2007 by Monica Pradham. Clearly a “fast read.”  THE HINDI-BINDI CLUB wasn’t written quite as well as the other two books, and I admit I couldn’t help comparing it unfavorably to Amy Tan’s JOY LUCK CLUB, but the recipes for regional Indian dishes at the end of some chapters looked tantalizing. No doubt I’ll have to try a few.

I decided to give the novel some slack–it was a first book after all–I thought there were enough really good moments that made up for it. To my surprise, I began to like the characters, even though it was difficult at times to discern who the speakling. and I even look forward to book two if/when it comes along. The theme weaves the stories of different generations of women, mothers who grew up in different parts of India in different class systems and from what became Pakistan and their American-born children. They learn  from each other, after a series of life tragedy, what they need to know in order to sustain traditional old-world values while accepting the inevitable differences of their daughters. Likewise, the women growing up in the U.S. learn to appreciate the people their mothers were and are. Several visits to India reveal India herself changing subtly along with them. As much as I thought I already knew a lot about India, I still learned from this book. Isn’t that what we’re all hoping to do when we read?

One final word about Miss Pradham. I learned in the credits at the end that her parents settled in Pittsburgh in the late 1960s where she was born. Hubby and I lived there several years from the mid-1960s, and we were somewhat active  in the Indian Society at the University. It’s quite reasonable to think our paths may have crossed somewhere. Small world, isn’t it?

all in the family

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Some of you asked about the family project that was driving me to distraction in November and  December, and I kind of dropped the ball in responding. I’m now ready to reveal this unwieldy project for whatever it’s worth. It’s a four-generation “tree” of family members of the Indian side of our family. Beginning in the middle, there’s Hubby’s father and mother (with a larger photo just above), then fanning out on both sides with each of his siblings, and their children and grandchildren, all surrounded by candid photographs from each family. Thumb sized pictures are also shown in each box, along with the birth-marriage-death dates, so that future generations can easily pair the person with the name. My daughters have commented on how many facial characteristics–head shape, lips, etc.,  they share with some of their aunts, uncles and cousins in India. It was done using Microsoft Word 2010 in a word document with all the complications encountered in producing a poster sized document on a much-smaller scaled computer monitor, drawing the text boxes within text boxes with Word’s “paint” program in the manner of “eyeballing to make everything fit. Miraculously, everything did!

Some of you may remember our planned 2010 Indian family reunion in Goa where we planned a weekend to reacquaint our daughters and their families with Hubby’s side of the family. Unfortunately, my health concerns precluded my participation, but we urged the family to proceed without us. Our daughters, not having been to India in about 25 years, asked their father for a crash course of sorts–who was married to whom, who were their children, their father or mother and so on. That may have been when the initial seed was sown to develop a patriarchal family tree for everyone’s benefit. This idea was further reinforced when we had most of Hubby’s relatives  based in the US visit us during the summer. Family genealogies were typically passed along orally, or hand-written by elders to be passed down, so somebody knew some family specifics, but despite the effort so much family history seems to get lost. I, for one, am a strong believer is preserving and strengthening family links. So for my own sake and that of our small family, I decided to undertake the task of setting down–as officially as possible within my own limitations–a family register for the current four generations, to coexist with that of my own family origins. With the current trend of geologically scattering of families, for ours it would be a beginning family connection all-around.

This undertaking was by no means a simple task. As in the case of hubby’s family in South India, complications such as there being no family surname such as Smiths or Browns as we have in the West. Instead, a child with a given name such as Fred will often be identified as Fred, son of so and so. In addition, the families often use  “clan” names which may indicate the ancestral village of their origin and the sub caste the family belongs to, although not routinely used as an official or daily use name. To complicate the matter further, the child “naming” ceremony occurs about 10 days after the birth of the child and so the hospital birth records do not identify the child with any name except as son or daughter of the father so and so. Thus, use of birth records to construct a family tree is out of the question.   The way the children in the Tamil Brahmin families are named also adds another layer of confusion. Depending on the sex of the child the given name  may be a god’s name, or a deceased grandfather or grandmother’s name.  Very often the grandparents and other close relatives weigh in on the names and the parents try to accommodate everyone’s wishes.  So, the children end up with official name (for school records) and several other names given by the relatives.  Most of the time, as in this country, the long names are shortened with nicknames for daily use.  That explains why so many of Hubby’s family are known by different names within the family. I think you can see how, for anyone born in the West, it makes for much confusion about who’s who in the family. The project was duly completed and mailed to each family a week or more before Christmas.

I believe it quite appropriate to end this posting with the same quote by Rabindranath Tagore printed on the poster itself (just above the bottom picture border). “The tapestry of life’s story is woven with the threads of life’s ties, ever joining and breaking.” Ever joining indeed! As with these kinds of charts, ours has already become obsolete, but in a good way. One of Hubby’s nephew’s wife in India just gave birth to their second daughter few days ago. As per the custom, we are waiting to learn her name.

meandering along a country lane in Nashik

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Remember that old saying You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl! As far as I’m concerned, it’s one-hundred-percent true. Ever since I began this series on India 2011, I’ve been looking forward to posting these views of a very different kind of India than the one I’ve shown you so far. It’s great to take your pilgrimages to religious temples and historic monuments, but for a very long time I wondered–where do Indians go to just get away from the proverbial rat race? Well, now I know, so I refuse to apologize for featuring these lovely village and country scenes before even telling you about the vineyard that brought us here in the first place. For now I’ll put the cart in front of the horse and save the talk about wines and all that and instead talk about the perfect getaway from crowds and traffic in Bombay.

Though we only have two days left before we leave Bombay for New York, Raghu planned a wonderful excursion that took us to Nashik, in Maharashtra State (incidentally, Bombay’s the capitol city). It’s about 180 kms away (or about 112 miles). Due to the roads and the heavy traffic getting out of Bombay, that isn’t exactly a day trip; it takes about six hours by automobile, so we’d be staying overnight. Nashik is considered India’s greenbelt and top producer of grapes (wine country), onions and tomatoes, and varieties of fruits and vegetables. It’s also where the nation’s currency and stamps printer, the Security Printing Press, is located. Incidentally, Hubby’s father was the Director of the Stamps Press in Nashik during the last three years of his career. One other tidbit you may enjoy: According to the Ramayana Hindu epic, it was Nashik’s forests where Lord Rama hid out during his 14 years of exile after killing the demon king–the one that stole Sita, I presume.  Even though it’s one of the fastest growing cities in India, there’s still room here to breathe.

And talk about breathing room! We arrived at the Sula Winery mid-afternoon. After checking into our rooms, and sharing a tray of cheese and crackers washed down with glasses of wine on the dining room veranda, it seemed the perfect time take a late afternoon, leg-stretching, walk to explore. Tomorrow we’d tour the winery and sample the wines.

Right away we come upon a cow. I wasn’t afraid as we approached, but kept a respectful distance all the same. The cow and I “eyeball” each other as we pass. I’m not sure who was more nervous, me or the cow. At least I wasn’t thinking about cobras at this point. Raghu shared with me that he thinks that cows are awesome creatures and there is nothing more peaceful than seeing a cow resting under tree looking very contented. As a country girl who practically grew up with cows, I had to agree. Both of us, dedicated amateur photographers that we are, snapped away with our cameras, I with my point and shoot canon, he with his much more sophisticated, albeit heavier, single lens reflex digital.

What could be more appealing or more restful than lakes and mountains in near perfect weather conditions . . . and could that be a bird swooping down on that tree limb? I was so busy looking at the cow I didn’t notice.

Add to that puzzle another bit of mystery–how did this USA 385 Speed Bot come to rest in this pasture in India? There has to be a story there, don’t you think?

Ditto for this little objet d´art.  It’s deceptively large in the picture. Actually it was quite small, probably about three inches long, and stitched from a gray-colored heavy canvas fabric with painted features and filled with some sort stuffing. It’s an interesting little relic and could be anything. A religious symbol of some sort? Voodoo doll? A pagan or religious amulet? Fetish doll? Most probably it’s a homemade doll some poor village child lost. Looks can be deceiving though. It’s either very frightened or very mean. Look at that mouth! I left it where it was for the next tourist to ponder.

With these kinds of vibes in the air, I must confess I wasn’t exactly unmindful of the fact that there might be cobras lurking about. I had read in the local paper from the hotel that cobras are quite common in the area. There was even a story about a resident living on the road we were on during the drive had reported one in his yard just the day before. And the sun was beginning to sink below the hills.

And then we were approaching this interesting looking structure I’d had my eye on for awhile during the walk. I asked Raghu if he knew what it was used for. Indeed he did. It’s an open-air funeral pyre Hindus use for cremating their dead. Traditionally located near a body of water (there’s just a glimpse on the right just below the tree branches), a pyre is prepared with piles of wood stacked on the concrete stage you see here.

 The body, laid out on a stretcher, is then placed on top, feet facing south (so that it can walk in the direction of the dead). The chief mourner–usually the eldest son–facing south, walks around the pyre three times, sprinkling water and ghee. He then lights the pyre with a flaming torch. After the fire consumes the body, which usually takes several hours, the mourners return home, and the entire family must then have a bath, and begin a period of mourning lasting 12 days during which the family is subject to many rules and rituals. One or two days after the funeral, the chief mourner returns to the cremation ground to collect the remains in an urn to be immersed in a river. I tried to imagine what it would be like to attend a cremation ritual as a member of the family. I was mightily relieved when Raghu informed me that only men attend the actual pyre–women and children remain at home.

You may be thinking how barbaric. However, Christian burial–when it comes right down to it–is no less barbaric. Growing up in the southern U.S., where children usually attended funerals at an early age (at least in my community), I always worried as a child What if Aunt Harriet really wasn’t dead, just in a deep sleep or in coma? How horrendous if they woke up later and found themselves in a box in a pitch black grave. I think I’d just as soon be torched as be buried in the ground.
And here’s the edge of nearby lake just to the right of the funeral pyre.

And as dusk approaches, more cows standing nearby in that peaceable kingdom may have all the answers to all the deep complexities of life and death. But they’re not saying anything. 

Well, we haven’t seen any cobras yet, and here’s a paved road home, or at least back to our rooms at the Sula BEYOND, so we elect to head back that way instead of crossing the fields in darkness.

On the way, we pass this pretty girl from a nearby farm, a perfect Kodak moment if I ever saw one.  I ask and get permission to take a photograph–and get at least two shots in as quickly as possible. (Okay, I admit that I had to do a little adjustments with the light setting because it was nearly dark by the time I took these pictures. I think they turned out well in spite of myself.)

Just today I was reading the new PEOPLE magazine, in which the “fairy-tale” wedding pictures of celebrity-for-no-reason Kim Kardashian were featured. The bride was perfectly made up with diamonds worth millions of dollars from head to toe. She was lovely of course. But may I say, no matter how much money she makes just for being the daughter of a famous dead fashion designer, she (Kim Kardashian) can’t hold a candle to the natural beauty of this simple village girl.

Finally, nearly everyday here along the Wasatch front in Utah, U.S.A., we’re treated to a wonderful sunset. Here’s what that same old sun does on the other side of the world. It’s my National Geographic moment. And look! More cows!


(Next time we’ll take a look at the winery and learn a little about the wines themselves.)

Postscript:  Daughter, S-I-L, Hubby and I enjoyed another Margarita evening on Thursday of this week. One year after the completion of my chemo- and radiation-treatments at Huntsman Cancer Institute, my scans are still clean. Happy to report we’re still living happily with NED.