mornings on a farm in india (sometimes)

this is from my perspective, i'm sure it is different for zoe.

6:00 annoyed by phone alarm
6:05 leave bedroom, going back in a half hour to get zoe who was too tired
6:10 drank chai, squatted down by cooking fire because it's cold without the sun
6:20 cooking dosas, realize it's awesome, left fire to get zoe
6:25 cooking dosas with zoe i begin to grind up coconut chutney
7:20 writing down coconut chutney in blog
7:50 begin eating breakfast with everybody
8:20 starring aimlessly out the front door at nature
8:30 cleaning up, pulling water from the well to drink, listening to birds
8:40 working in the garden pulling weeds, find strange insects, zoe joins me and waters the eggplant
9:20 water tank runs dry, we turn on pump to fill it back up, it gets hot
9:50 give up working, plan on a wash
9:55 decide not to wash, go read instead
10:30 chai time, we eat gooseberries too and some left over dosa
10:45 read again, fall asleep
12:30 wake up, attempt to not wait to eat
12:45 waiting to eat
1:00 awesome lunch

the monkey i shall not forget

today a little past noon the neighbor's dog snagged a monkey that was stuffing his mouth with eggplant. the monkey had quite the courage to be so far from the safety of trees. the neighbor's dog had been alert all morning due to the constant monkey raiding. when the dog spotted the monkey, it ran after it. in an attempt to escape, the monkey ran into the fence instead of the trees it came from, and the dog got it.

first i heard yelling, and when i looked i was shocked. there was a big male monkey in the jaws of the dog. by no means is this a reflection of the farm, or of the dog. the dog was acting out of pure instinct and nobody was encouraging him. in fact, sahadevan was beating the dog with a towel to release the monkey. unfortunately, the dog would not give up the monkey.

other people began to try and rescue the monkey. at one point somebody was trying to pull the animal from the dog by his tail. sahadevan got a rope around the monkey,  threw the towel over the dog's eyes, and freed the monkey.

the monkey was pulled by rope to the shade, grabbing onto anything he could, thinking that he was going to be eaten by yet another animal. as the monkey sat panting in the shade, we brought him a banana and some water. the monkey pushed himself into a sitting position and looked up at the five of us who were trying to keep our distance but help at the same time.

the monkey looked uninjured. there was no blood and were no puncture wounds from the dog. he simply sat looking up at us. we slid a bowl of water over to him, but he did not drink. his cheeks were stuffed with eggplant. we began to toss some water on him to cool him off and let him drink. he opened his mouth to catch the water. some he would swallow, the rest would wash soil out of his mouth through his decaying teeth.

he continued to pant and breathe with difficulty. i kept thinking a lung was punctured, but there was no puncture at all. we all kept trying to figure out what was wrong; he would just sit and stare up at us with an expression that was not of pain, but of fear transitioning into curiosity, and then to understanding we were not going to hurt him. this led to acceptance. a monkey's face expresses emotions just as ours do. it was strange; it seemed human, but not at all, in the same moment.

the monkey crawled to some grass, laid down, and stopped breathing. he had died from shock, first shook up by a dog, then dragged away by humans. we did the absolute best we could, and yet again may i express this reflects nothing on the farm. it has never happened before, and all efforts were toward the most humane treatment of the dog and the monkey.

i knew he was dead when he stopped breathing. others thought at first that he was playing dead, but i watched him die; that five minute transition in his eyes from terror to peace made it so clear what was to come next. i would like to say that he did not die in agony, for he had no wounds, but internally the dog may have crushed some vital functions.

i will think about many things differently now. as i go over and over the intentions of every being during those 45 minutes and see nothing done wrong, i begin to wonder why we live like we are guaranteed to live so long. we buried him in the field, at the end of an empty bed. during the burial, we noticed he had several puncture wounds on the side of his chest.

blogging from in the jungle

the computer was recently fixed here so now we have internet way out in the jungle. it is very slow, but i like it, any faster and i would be on the web all day. we also lose the power almost everyday, but never for more than a hour. basically all i am saying is it's a bit tricky to use the internet for anything beyond simple small tasks.

but i am very glad to be able to talk!

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....

left is sahadevan and to the right is jeroy, in the foreground is millet.

our first few days on an indian farm

meeting the people of this farming community.

from kochi we took an overnight train, a taxi, a bus, another bus that was the wrong bus, and then a motorized rickshaw to the correct bus stop. jeroy was waiting there with milan for us.

the four of us walked down a narrow footpath for about a quarter mile, passing many houses. when we finally reached the correct home, we were served water and we slept for a good two hours.

when i woke up i met shree kumar and chatted  with sahadevan. shree kumar is a part-time chemical engineering professor who works three consecutive days (monday through wednesday) and lives with his sister during that time as the university is a good distance away.

sahadevan is an anti-nuclear activist (since the age of 16) and is also the father of a family living here in this community. he has two children who are home schooled here: his eight-year-old boy milan, and his twelve-year-old daughter svetlana. his wife is ranjana, who we have only recently met as she was away the first two days.

jeroy has a doctorate in artificial intelligence and something to do with the internet, he joined this community only a few days before our arrival.  all of us work on the farm together and live in the same house.

that sums it up for humans. there are two cows here, a matured calf and a mother who is carrying. there is a dog named gunda, the neighbors dog, but we feed him, and a puppy who looks sort of german shepard-like.

zoe and i are still translating many of the crops into english, but many of them we have never encountered before. the ones that are quite familiar are bananas, coconuts, okra, and rice, which is the core of our diet. we also eat a lot of tomatoes, onions, and lentils, which are bought from the market.

as far as mysterious crops grown here that we have yet to translate, there is a mysterious nut. it is chewed with tobacco and has a stimulating effect on the brain. this is what brings in main income on the farm. there are also some other strange fruits which are mashed up and used for bright orange food coloring.

there are enemies of the farm.

as shree kumar said: "everything beautiful is our enemy." peacocks and monkeys are the farm's main problems. so far we have seen a lot of monkeys but no peacocks; apparently they roam the fields early in the morning.

the monkeys are quite clever. they will hide behind trees just outside the house and wait for us to leave, and then they will run in and grab some food. a small ambush is 20 monkeys, a large one being 50, but only a few go inside the house. they eat the green coconuts before they are any good for us to eat. they have also recently figured out that we usually hear them when they drop the coconuts, so when they finish eating them they tuck them back into the tree. they are loud when they jump from tree to tree; they never really sneak by us.

they will also eat the crops, especially bananas. shree kumar has told us stories of monkeys coming in and taking away all the almost-ripe bananas that were to be picked very soon. they are small, mostly in the range of 5 to 10 pounds.

the farm house.

there are three identical houses; we own the one in the center. originally there was a father who split the land between his three sons, two of which are still here, one of which sold out to the trust organization that owns this farm. the building is roughly 20 by 40 or 50 feet with and has an attic that is used for storage. at night the rats are quite loud, but they have yet to enter the room where zoe and i sleep. mostly we just hear the crashing of a bowl in the kitchen or scurrying amongst the rafters. shree kumar sleeps near the kitchen, so the rats keep him up a bit more. one morning he was telling me about how the rats kept him up, and every time he would shine his flashlight at the kitchen they would quickly scurry back up to the attic.

we sleep on a straw mat with two blankets on top. the floor is smooth concrete so sleeping can be difficult on the stiff ground. we also eat on the floor as well, in a circle all together on with small mats, and sit Indian-style. we eat with our hands and there are no rules about table manners; burps are welcome. after dinner we wash our plates outside, first rinsing them, then scrubbing with ash, then rinsing again, the rinsing in really clean water.

so far the food has been very good. each meal is a mountain of rice with vegetables on top or something similar to that. there are many chai breaks spread through out the day. we attempted to make coffee which came out weak; we drank it anyways but our indian friends found it to be overwhelmingly too strong. zoe and I are both keen on learning how to cook all the indian dishes which taste so amazing, especially since the food is so fresh.

there is a western toilet here that empties into a tank just down the hill. shree kumar adds critters to it to break down the waste and produce methane. there is a hose from the tank to the kitchen stove, but since it is new not enough methane has built up yet. there is also a composting toilet which i am fascinated with because there is no smell at all. i could be blindfolded and tell you i was in the kitchen. the waste from that is broken down well and added to the trees.

the farm is on the side of a sloping hill and at the bottom is a river about 20 or 30 feet wide and about 4 feet deep. the river is green from all the algae and there are tons of small fish in it. it is also great for swimming and we find it to be a great temperature in the heat of the day. water is pumped from this river onto the farm for irrigation. we have a separate well which is very clean and does not need filtering. the well is about 8 feet wide and 40 feet deep and gives me a little bit of vertigo. there is about 5 feet of water on the bottom, but shree kumar says it fills all the way up in the rainy season. the neighbor has one the same size but it has no wall around it; there is just a gigantic hole.

what seems to be our schedule:

6:50 try to wake up

7:45-815 get up

8:00 breakfast

8:30-10:30 or 11:00 work in the field until it is too hot

10:30 or 11:00-1:00 hang out, read, write, tea, and go for a swim

1:00 Lunch

1:00 to 4:30 is siesta, very little is accomplished other than sleeping and reading since this is the hottest part of the day, and it's hot!

4:30-6:30 or 7:00 bring leaves down for compost from the jungle which is just above the farm on the hill (but really surrounds us).

7:00-8:00 relax and avoid the misquotes which come out in the evening

8:00 dinner

8:30 possibly a meeting, but usually nothing just hanging out

9:00 bed

i have really enjoyed eating the fresh bananas. one tree doing well will make about 200 bananas. there is also a flower on the end of the stem with the bananas; the flower is actually a lot of little flowers, and we pick them and the suck out the sweet nectar. each flower only has a few drops of nectar, but it is so good. then we also eat the inside of the trunk of the banana tree/giant stem. the inner core which is maybe only an inch or two in diameter is a lot like potato and has a mild taste.

the coconuts have a tough husk on the outside, which is pried off with a simple lever machine. after smacking the tough inner shell with a large knife, it splits opens and we drink the coconut water. we eat the flesh on the inside of the shell which is definitely fatty and delicious. to make oil, the flesh is left in the sun to dry out, then i believe it is ground up.

lots of rice is grown here and is cleaned off-site. it is about halfway between brown and white rice due to the factory. we cook it in a solar oven which does a fine job. my favorite rice is cooked with coconut water and ground flesh.

clothing in india

i almost forgot a really fun event of today. during our adventure near the synagogue, which is the most touristy place on the island, i got a comment on my milo in maine fish t-shirt. in front of every shop (and there are lots of them) there is a man harassing you to come in and take a look; they all have different methods. complimenting is my favorite. one man in front of his shop looked at my fish t-shirt and said: "I like your shirt, fish! you cook (slight pause) and then eat!"

this evening we went to the "teapot," which was a semi-touristy tea shop. we ate samosas with masala chai and i had an additional coffee. the coffee was yet again weak and kinda strange; maybe this is what southern indian coffee is like? anyways the tea makes up for it. then we were on the hunt for some ice cream and found another semi-touristy place. zoe had a deep-fried banana with ice cream and i had a coffee with ice cream. that concluded our bizarre dinner.

afterwards we went to listen to indian classical music. it was northern style, which was a sitar and drums. the music was great and i think the person in front of me fell asleep. i found it great to meditate and let the mind wander. apparently there are over 100 different kinds of drums just with inside kerala.

benson just made the awesome list. benson is the owner of the place we are staying at, which I would recommend to anybody (costa gamma.) i think benson made my night. when we returned from the music he was standing on the fount porch with his buddy who picked us up from the train station two days back. benson complimented zoe's salwar kameez, then looked at me and asked where my indian clothes were. i laughed and then told him i was working on it. i really am interested in indian clothing. benson recommended a local tailor and the amount i should pay ($1.60-$2.00.) he added that he would also show me how to wear my new clothes once i got them, which would be so great because i am clueless.

i mentioned after this exciting news that zoe was really wanting to learn how to wear a sari. he replied: "oh, i'll get my wife to come over here tomorrow to show her how."

tomorrow should be fun.

lunch in kochi

today we went to a local restaurant and had thali. first they laid down a banana leaf and then put a mountain of rice on it. it was followed by five or six different sauces ladled from cans the waiter carried around. two addition small cups were laid on the table for each of us; one of them was curd and the other a dessert. the curd I put on the rice immediately and it was tasty, i then, unknowing poured half the dessert on the rice as well which you are suppose to drink straight from the cup. the surprised waiter said: "no, no, sweets, that is sweets." oh well, i am learning quickly. i suppose that's like putting ice cream on steak. 

then there  was the problem of getting the food to my mouth with just my hands. it was rice and a bunch of runny sauces, so i began mixing them all together. not quite the way to do it, but it was successful. i am not sure if the people were staring at me because i was white or because i was mixing my food. my aim was to mix the main sauce with the rice and one other sauce at a time, but i ended up mixing in more. the real trick is getting the rice and sauce to the right consistency when it does not drip from your hand or fall apart on the way to your mouth. using your fingertips you grab and scoop a little bit at a time.

next time i will definitely make a pool of the main sauce in the middle of my rice and then mix smaller amount at a time rather than my entire dish at once. the walk back to the hotel was really hot. along the way we found a lost baby goat which was heart wrenching, it just kept running and calling out for its mom. we also stopped at a fruit stand and got 4 bananas. the man weighed them and held up two fingers which i interpreted as 20 rupees; only when we were back at our hotel did i realize it was probably 2 rupees. 50 cents for 4 bananas would be a lot in india, but if it was 20 rupees it would probably be the white-guy-charge, a very common charge here.