Max Holden: figuring out indian life, it's simply a state of mind

since the farm has no internet i simply do daily entries until i do.

wednesday, february 2nd, 2011

i am beginning to understand george orwell's hatred of rats. they went after my coffee, but failed to get through the packaging… that just made it personal. their crap also rains down into our room from the roof, where they hang out and play cards.

zoë and i are still getting use to the climate here. we both struggle with the heat and feel fatigued even after it cools off. zoë has had a really hard time with allergies, which she is slowly figuring out. putting her up on a cot from the floor has seemed to help a lot. everyone at the farm has been understanding, meaning we have done little work. we both got mild heat exhaustion walking a kilometer in the sun to a store.

sometimes 6 weeks on this farm seems like way to long to even be in india, but other times 6 months in india does not seem long enough. i think both zoë and i experience this several times a day. it's a difficult call to make when you're not completely healthy.

the food is another struggle. i would say 80-90% of what we consume is rice, which our guts are not use to at all. the rest would be vegetables. we are completely vegan here minus the chai. it seems we are achieving the caloric levels necessary, but our bellies just cannot handle the variation in diet so quickly. the result seems to be lack of energy, with the heat being no help. i do find the diet reciprocal to the heat, full of salt and water.

making coffee takes time and a lot of effort, but it is completely worth it. also, check out our kitchen! some of the most amazing indian meals come out of this room.

thursday, february 3rd, 2011

yesterday i ground rice that had simply been soaking, not cooked, in a giant mortar. the pestle is probably 40 pounds, and the mortar i cannot imagine. ranjana said that it came with the house for an additional 1000 rupees, though i cannot believe that the previous owners would try to take it with them. at first it was hard work, until the rice became finer. 10 minutes later, when it was a paste, the pestle simply glided with little effort. ranjana said restaurants (and our neighbor) have electric grinders now, but that is definitely cheating.

zoë and i woke this morning fairly well rested; the cot has really helped zoë with her allergies. we ate dosas and coconut chutney for breakfast. we have a really hard time getting up before 8 because sleeping is usually difficult. 8 in the morning is when everyone else eats breakfast together. soon we will be able to join them, i hope.

in the fields i walk barefoot. barefoot because nothing else makes sense. there are channels we walk in that are sometimes ankle deep in water when the irrigation is running. i have yet to step on something sharp and have only suffered one insect bite on my ankle.

the mud squishes between my toes as i walk up and down the channels. we are all dispersing dried grass and leaves on the beds to protect them from the sun and hold moisture in. tiny frogs constantly jump in and out of the water, which is the exact color of coffee. there are many centipedes, flies, crickets, and weeds. although the soil is sandy and often hard, as we revive it, it's showing signs of becoming supportive of an immense amount of life.

we have 2 cows, and our neighbor has an additional 2 cows. all of them have the same character of being extremely sweet and slightly timid. their favorite treat is banana peels. everything goes to the cows that we do not eat, including the water we rinse the rice with. however, we do give the leftover rice to gunda, the neighbor's dog, the puppy is fed well.

zoë and i have taken shelter from the heat in our room. outside, the sun has begun to cook the soil, plants, and whatever lies exposed. zoë is half-napping, taking breaks to tell me her half-dreams, which are bizarre. the birds are chirping and the cows talk every once in a while. it is pleasant to lie and type in the cool dark room with only the door open. it's bright outside; the solar oven cooks the majority of our food easily.

we have been traveling 3 and a half weeks now, but it feels so much longer since we left home. possibly being on the other side of the planet has something to do with that, and maybe food poisoning. but it is also strange that we have been on the farm for less than a week and it's beginning to feel normal. well, on second thought, the daily schedule in place feels much more normal than the tree with bean pods that are larger than bananas.

as for what is around us, it's mostly forest, some rice fields, a few neighbors, and a dog that howls for about 3 hours every night. there is a market about 1 kilometer away. the market is also a bus stop; both only have 3 walls and a roof. it sells 4 or 5 different kinds of vegetables, general household items such as soap and toothbrushes, and things like biscuits, candy, chips, powdered drinks, and coconuts. our neighbor recently sold us about 100 bananas that were going to go to a market like this one. it's amazing the ripening pattern of these bananas, which is layer by layer going down.

this afternoon, zoë and I sat in the kitchen for a few hours observing how to cook indian food with ranjana. the stove is actually an open pit fire lined with bricks in a manner that can support multiple pots over the flames. indian food involves many different kinds of beans and peas. when they are split, then they are called dal. most of the time they are cooked in a pressure cooker that hisses steam when over the fire. some of the tastes produced by this kitchen, i have never encountered before.

the malaria medicine has some pretty strong side effects. i take it in the morning because if i take it before bed the sheets talk to me and i have insane dreams. zoë seems to be fine with it; i think her tablets release at a slower rate than mine.

friday, february 4th, 2011

it's almost 6, I think. 6 in the morning, that is. basically the only reason why i got up so early was because it was so much earlier than usual. we set the alarm on our phone for 6. but since the phone is thai, and still on thai time, we got up at 6 in the morning in thailand. that would be 4:30 here, but everyone thought it was 6 because the alarm chimed through the house "wake up, it's 6-o-clock" in that annoying robotic voice. too bad it did not say it in thai. shree kumar and sahadevan were already awake doing work and studying.

we decided to stay up since the brisk morning air really woke the two of us up. it cools off here at night. I think it goes below 60 degrees; it is almost chilly. we made pancake batter, or tried to. we made two batters for the pancakes out of milk, water, sugar, salt, powdered milk, and half a kilo of white flour in each because the market had only white flour. in one batter we put in four mashed bananas, and in the other half a ground coconut. I will let you know how they turned out. our test pancakes were dense, fruity, and great with a syrup of jaggery.

after that it was still pitch black outside, so zoë and i went out and did some stargazing. there was no moon, and the stars i see in the morning i have not seen before, as opposed to the stars i see in the evening, which are quite familiar. i spotted another planet that i have not seen before. i believe it is saturn or venus, but i have no idea. i got my binoculars out to see if i could possibly see a hit of a ring but had no luck. even though the stars are so bright here (brighter than at ecodharma,) i cannot identify much.

right now i am sitting in a sort of study room with 4-inch lizards snatching moths and flies from orbit of the one light. i am sitting across from sahadevan, who is studying the book series "my life is my message," which is mahatma gandhi's biography. gandhi himself filled about 120 volumes of books (plus letters,) accumulating something over 50,000 pages. although it is still so early, i hear in the kitchen the whine of the pressure cooker and the rumble of the mill. indians have one of the best breakfasts. i cannot tell you what it is because i do not know, but there are more kinds of breakfast here than anywhere else i have ever been. breakfast is usually sweet and always served with chai, which is simply half milk half water, tea powder, boiled, and served hot in small quantities constantly.

reflecting on earlier writing, i am appalled by myself for complaining so much about food poisoning in a developing country full of hunger. i feel awful about it, but at the same time i understand that this is part of the process of shedding my western self, which includes understanding i am obnoxious westerner. what i am really surprised by is that i had it in thailand instead of here in india. what is strange is that more people in india have access to cell phones then sanitation, cooking is done all by hand besides chopping vegetables, and we wash our dishes without soap.

the process for washing dishes, though, is effective. all the dishes and utensils are stainless steel. they are brought to the washing station outside which consists of two rough stone tables and two steel buckets. first you bring it to the two buckets of water: one a rinse, the other messier. you scrub out all the food you can and drain it on the banana trees, then you scrub everything with ash, removing oil and critters. after you rinse, or splatter your plates with water to remove the ash, you let it dry in the sun. the banana tree next to the washing station is by far our largest yielding tree, but you may have guessed that.

a bit later….

the pancakes were a hit, though they did not turn out quite like what i would consider to be normal pancakes in the states. nonetheless, they were really good; i think the fruit improved them a lot. sahadevan ate one and then ran into the kitchen and told zoë in hindi that they were good and she should make them every day. zoë understood, and then sahadevan continued to consume another 3 pancakes.

for those of you who wonder what shree kumar look like....