wedding culture

One of the houses above mine on the hillside had a wedding recently and I want to write a little about my observations. They are limited and by no means conclusive of the Indian marriage culture, but some of the events I observed are worth describing here.
I first noticed that some event was taking place when the drummers arrived with loud percussion for several hours one morning a few weeks ago. Even from within our stone-walled house, the reverberations of the two drummers reached my ears clearly (and forced me out of bed). Sometimes, the drummers had a good sequence together, wailing on their instruments as one. And then they would slip out of sequence and both be flailing all over the place, each dreaming up their own rhythm (or lacking any rhythm whatsoever) and audibly trying to pull the other drummer into their sequence. It was over the course of several hours I perceived this happening. During the whole event, there was no more than a few moments silence across the hillside. When I began my walk up to the office, I passed by the house where the drummers were performing. They were standing on the verandah while a teenage girl from the family, dressed in a fancy blue and green outfit that sparkled and shimmered, danced around them and into some of the rooms. Interestingly, others in the family, mostly men, just sat stoic on the same verandah, unmoved by the catchy beats nor showing any sympathy toward the girl’s dancing. I thought it odd, as it seemed only the two drummers and the one girl had anything to celebrate.
A few days later, on my walk up to the office, I noticed a pandal (cloth tent) raised outside the house tied to three trees and one corner of the roof. It was red and yellow and was square shaped and hung about fifteen feet above the ground. Unlike other wedding pandals I have seen before, this one had no sides, and was simply a twenty-foot-square cloth suspended above the ground. A few days later, as family guests arrived in town, they would sleep underneath this yellow and red pandal and perhaps also the wedding itself took place underneath it? Who knows, I did not see that part.
One evening, on my way home from the office, I noticed a jeep parked on the road at Redburn curve and a crowd of people around it. The jeep was stuffed full of simple coir mattresses and also comforters called resai and the crowd of people were from the wedding family who had come up to the road to collect the mattresses and carry them down to the house and place them under the pandal so people could sleep there. It was at that time that I realized the groom’s family had arrived on the scene to participate in the wedding ceremony. Typically, the groom’s family comes to the bride’s home and stays there for several days prior to the ceremony. It is the bride’s family that must take care of all their needs while they wait for the wedding, including cooking extravagant meals for them.
For the next few days, on my way to work I walked by the small crowd of grayish lumps which were actually people tucked under the resais underneath the pandal in front of the bride-to-be’s home. There were some fifteen or more lumps of faded, rented resai stirring in the early morning and I thought it must be quite cold for them each night, considering I am still shivering at night under the several wool blankets I have in my room inside.
[[This final observation is a bit graphic, but I feel the need to write about it, as it is particularly unusual and a first-time experience for me here.]] A few nights ago, I was walking home from the office again and it was about seven in the evening. I was walking on the jungle-path that I walk every day, which passes above the house where the wedding was happening and curves around to the side of it. When I was still above the house, making my way down the path, I heard a loud squeal pierce the stillness of the jungle in the fading light of evening. A second squeal and more followed, and I quickly realized that the wedding group had a pig at their gathering. As I rounded the curve of the path and looked down at the front of the house, three men were wrestling a medium-sized pig. A short distance away, a few others were tending a fire and wielding cooking utensils of various types. The pig was really struggling to free itself from the grip of the men. I realized they were planning to have a pig roast, and the squealing, struggling pig was on the menu. In Hindi, the word for pig is suer which means just what it sounds like: sewer. Why were they going to cook a pig? Hindus don’t eat them, Muslim’s of course don’t, so who would be doing it? Maybe Sikhs or Christians? I stood rooted to the trail as I watched the men flip the pig onto it’s side. I actually caught myself thinking: “Here it goes” as they held it fast and one man stabbed something into the pig’s neck. (I thought they would slit the throat or something, and the squealing and struggling would quickly end, but no.) After it had been pierced, the pig squealed all the more and violently struggled under the firm grip of the three men holding it to the ground. I could not move; I could not look away. The squealing was loud and disturbing in the otherwise still evening air as the pig gurgled and slowly died over the course of what seemed like many minutes. It was pretty terrible and I involuntarily shivered as I turned to continue down the path to my house.
The next morning, the pandal was gone, the coir mattresses gone and only a few people lingering around in the early morning sunlight. Apparently, it was all over. I suppose the wedding ceremony happened somewhere else, and I only saw a portion of the bigger events. Keep in mind, the sum total of my perception consists of a few moments on a few days as I walked past the house where everything took place.
I write about these few observations because they are unique experiences in my life here, and they point to some quirks about and aspects of the culture and place in which I live.

green with hope

I saw something unusual happening in the jungle on the side of the mountain below the road on my way to work last week: a team of men with sacks and rakes were cleaning up the garbage that has been dumped over the edge of the wall for a long time. I thought this was remarkable because I have never seen anyone doing this activity in the five years I have lived in Mussoorie. There is no municipal infrastructure for garbage collection here, but there is an Eco Task Force (whom I presume has undertaken the cleanup of the hillside). It was so good to see the greening hillside relieved of the blemish of garbage! Shortly after taking note of the good activity of cleaning up the mess, I was inspired to shout down to the crew with the rakes and bags and say “Thank you!” because I was so happy that someone was doing something positive. I thought of putting up a sign that read:
do not litter here or maybe something more forceful, in hopes that the people responsible for the trashing of the jungle would think twice before emptying their garbage cans over the wall. Almost immediately after, I felt the urge to go and grab the people living above the place where the cleanup was happening and show them the result and ask them to keep it this way, and not continue dumping their refuse over the wall. But I realized the futility of such an urge, because my reasoning for why not to litter and why to keep the hillside free from garbage is an alien concept. I could almost hear the response of a person shown the cleaned jungle: “Well of course, they should be cleaning it. What would they have to do for work if I did not dump my garbage over the wall for them to clean up?” So instead, I just tried to enjoy the knowledge that someone had issued a decree that the jungle in that place should be cleaned up and that is was actually happening. Who knows how long it will last.
I was walking with two of our interns later in the day, after lunch, to a nearby shop to get ice cream (because it is finally warm enough to allow for such an activity) and we noticed another phenomenon: two Indian men were installing a stainless steel public trash can on the roadside at another notorious place for garbage dumping! What a concept! The reason people chuck their trash over the wall into the jungle is because they do not have any other convenient way to dispose of it. Again, visions of a sign in lights that reads: do not litter here – use me mounted above the new trash can came to mind. We bought our ice creams and we walking back from the shop, peeling the wrappers of the cones and oh, how I longed for the new trash can to be ready so I could joyfully place my wrapper in it. Alas, I held the sticky wrapper in my hand all the way back to the office and deposited it in the trash bin there. Someday soon, though, I will gladly use the new one.

what a ride

We had been in the bazaars in Dehradun all day, from 9am until 8pm, fighting through exceptional crowds of shoppers purchasing gifts for the Hindu holiday: Diwali. My friend Danna and I made a special trip to Dehradun, below Mussoorie, both to visit a seasonal mela (fair) known for its good selection of hand-made things, and to purchase a number of items needed for our office Director’s soon approaching wedding. Since the stalls at the mela would not be open for several hours, we walked to Paltan bazaar, the main shopping district in Dehradun. We went into more cloth shops that day than I care to count, trying to find just the right colored fabrics for Matthew and Ivy’s wedding decorations.
One other particularly difficult task was locating large glass vases to be used as centerpieces with live goldfish in them. At some point several months prior, I had mentioned it as an idea and the bride-to-be and her groom were then set on having them at the reception following their wedding ceremony. Nothing quite like live fish… Unfortunately, we discovered that large glass vases or jars are rare in Dehradun, and even more difficult to describe to shopkeepers. This chore was compounded by a certain requirement on Diwali that all Hindu households must purchase new household items, particularly shiny metal items. This meant that all shops in the main bazaar selling household items (like large glass jars) and shiny metal things were set up in such a way that their wares spilled out onto the street on tables and in fact no shopper was allowed into the shop itself, because it was so overstocked in preparation for this special event that no one other than the one or two or twelve employees could reach anything except to climb here and there fetching items that the eager Diwali-shoppers were directing them to from outside of the shop. That is to say, it was all but impossible to find the particular large glass jars we were seeking. The metal shops on Diwali-eve would prove to be a source of amusement later in the evening.
Much of the remainder of the day was spent walking up and down the length of Paltan bazaar in search of wedding things. Several times Danna and I both ran into a ‘wall’ of fatigue and had to escape to the favorite tandoori chicken restaurant in the city and two times to a not-so-nearby coffee shop to refuel. At last, near the end of the day, laden with many plastic bags of goods acquired, we returned to the mela and the city’s Parade Ground so that Danna could complete some of her Christmas shopping. Another hour and even more plastic bags in hand, we made our way out of the Parade Ground. It had occupied my mind for more than a few hours that we would need to arrange some conveyance to get ourselves back to Mussoorie from Dehradun, since we had taken a shared taxi to Dehradun earlier in the morning. It was now just past eight’ o’clock in the night and the last local bus to Mussoorie went at seven pm. Our only realistic option was to get to the railway station with all our plastic bags of goods and hire a taxi from there to Mussoorie. But how to get to the railway station? A typical method in Dehradun and much of India would be to flag down an auto-rickshaw and catch a ride to the local railway station where they keep the big, white, classic Ambassador taxicabs. However, this night I opted for a different mode of transport to carry us to the taxi stand.
On the way into the fair, I noticed among the cars and motorcycles in the parking lot, two white horses with young men who were offering rides around the parking lot to the children. Half-cocked, I approached the horsemen and inquired about their steeds, nuzzling the soft velvet nose of the horsey closest to me. At first, I was not really serious about taking a ride, but then, part of the way through a struggling conversation in Hindi, a wild idea captured my mind—we could have the horses take us to the railway station! Following a few minutes of convincing the horsemen I was actually serious and a quick double-check with Danna to see if she was game, we saddled up. With a crowd of people looking on, I climbed onto my steed, (a little too overzealous at first, nearly sliding right off the opposite side). The young man who was to lead my horse to the railway station handed me back an armload of plastic bags I had asked him to hold while I mounted. A few seconds later we came to know that Danna was struggling to climb on to her horse, as hers was the taller of the two, and I had climbed aboard the shorter one. With a lot of giggling and more gaping looks from the growing crowd around us, she successfully climbed up and was handed back her armload of plastic bags. In fact, our hands were so full of bags that we found it impossible to actually hold on to anything on the horses, and were each forced to squeeze with our legs to keep from falling off as the young men led us across the parking lot to exit the Parade Ground.
Upon exiting the grounds, we stepped out onto the road and walked directly into oncoming traffic. This became a little unnerving when large trucks drove by. Within a moment, people along the sides of the road took notice of our horses’ unlikely activity, and even more unlikely riders who were smiling and laughing our heads off. These same people on the side of the road began whooping and clapping, laughing and even cheering. After a few minutes, we paused at a traffic light at one of the more busy intersections in Dehradun, waiting for the green light with the rest of the scooters, motorcycles and cars around us. People were talking to us while we waited, smiling and laughing, rolling down the windows in their cars to take a clearer look at the two white people on horses in the middle of the road. After crossing the intersection, we passed down more roads and more surprised onlookers.
Eventually, we emerged from a narrow alley right into the heart of Paltan bazaar, where we had walked and shopped earlier in the day with millions of others. If it was at all possible, there were even more people in the bazaar at this hour—it was completely packed to the point of being a solid mass of humanity surging and swelling like an ocean. Our two white horses were led right into the middle of the sea of people shopping, and we rode above it all looking out across the waves with exhilaration and wonder. It was spectacular seeing the full bazaar, lighted and roaring with activity, while we slipped through it all above the heads of all those walking on the ground. Every so often we would come upon a particularly crowded section where it seemed impossible to squeeze through—these were inevitably the same metal shops that spilled out onto the street with tables full of shiny metal things. They caused such a knot of people struggling to purchase shiny metal and we laughed all the more as we realized the cause of the traffic jam.
As we rode through the bazaar that night on white horses, I will always remember the magical effect our crazy activity had on the faces and lives of so many people who saw us. People cheered. They shook our hands, and congratulated us for our great idea. They called and gestured frantically to their co-workers or families to come running out of the shops and catch a glimpse of the crazy people riding by on the horses. Shopping-wearied faces would light up with wonder and joy when they noticed us riding by. There was not a single person we saw that night that did not smile or wave—except the three police officers at the crowd-control barrier at the intersection at the end of Paltan bazaar who did not know what to think of us as we rode by, struggling to decide whether to smile and laugh or chase us down and arrest us.
When we arrived at the taxi stand some 45 minutes later, fatigued from laughing so much (and squeezing to hold on with our legs), we climbed down, shook hands all around with the horsemen and stepped into a taxi to ride up to Mussoorie. It was a special way to end the day and one I may never try to replicate but won’t soon forget.

camping out there

Although it was awhile ago now, I think it still relevant to write a few thoughts about the actual campout, especially since you might have been waiting for some time now to hear what happened.
Two moments in the camping trip stick in my mind as memorable images. The first: the process and method of conveying 17 people with camping equipment (tents, pots & pans, generator, light bulbs, laptop, sound-system) and food for two days to a field on top of a mountain in north India.
As I wait for the rest of the group to arrive at the building where we gather for church, a sense of inner satisfaction wells up in me at the cinched-down snugness of my backpack with a minimal amount of gear. I am a wannabe minimalist. Then Edwin arrives in his sport utility vehicle, fairly heavily-laden with gear and equipment. “Heavily-laden” is a gentle term for overloaded. There is a pile of gear on the roof four feet tall. I have seen this before in other experiences, so at first I am not surprised. When I approach the vehicle to meet Edwin and add my little backpack to the pile on the roof I notice that the entire interior of the vehicle is also full of gear and that there actually aren’t any people inside yet. And we apparently still haven’t added any of the large pots or the food… My gut-response to the situation at this point is: it cannot be done, where is the other vehicle?
The rest of the team arrives with their stuff, and undaunted by the appearance of the vehicle, they begin to climb all over it like ants and pile up the rest of the gear on the roof, including much of the stuff from the interior, giant pots and bags of rice and vegetables and my minimalist backpack. I shrug and climb on too, as I am recruited to lash down the now elephant-sized mass of gear and equipment with a feeble rope. Standing on the running board is not high enough to really work on tying things down, so I climb up and stand on the open window at the back door, all the while marveling that we are actually only going to take this much with us for two days. Within minutes, we have secured the “elephant” to the roof and crammed most of the people in the group inside. I have the privilege of sitting in the front seat with Edwin’s twins on my lap. Three of the guys on the team drive off on the motorbike. Some of the girls and Nivedit are not present—they have walked ahead on the road and we are going to pick them up on the way... My wonderings about how and where we will put them are shortly answered when we catch up the women a few minutes later and they simply climb on to the running boards on both sides of the vehicle and we drive off. The stares and gaping mouths of the people in the cars passing us from the other direction are enough to tell that we are quite a sight to behold. I smile as I think, “I love India…”
The second image: the process of camping with Indians has its own unique style and flavor. Setting up camp in the jungle with seventeen people including little kids and a huge amount of stuff is a recipe for disaster or at least a potentially big mess and not much fun. However, in this case, it is not a disaster or a big mess, and we have a great time. I am standing in the same field where Parmesh and I stood earlier in the day, clicking poles together to set up a tent (the first of four) and I pause to look around at the group. Some of the girls are sitting together cutting up vegetables and peeling potatoes while others are starting a fire and still others filling the pots with water. Two of the guys are carrying the generator to a place a little distance away from the rest of the camp while others are stringing wire through the trees and splicing light bulb sockets into it. (Oh, my!) Edwin is setting up the sound system and his laptop for the upcoming dance party later on after dinner. A few others are emerging from the jungle with more firewood they have gathered and one of the girls is pulling sweaters onto Edwin’s kids because the sun is setting and it is starting to get cold. Everyone is smiling and talking together and there is a buzz about the campsite. I stand there in the gathering twilight and think how remarkable a thing it is to see people working together in unity or harmony so apparently natural and simple. No one is standing in the middle shouting orders. No one is sitting around with nothing to do. All are active and working together to make things happen. I am filled with happiness because I am part of it and it is beautiful. I continue snapping the poles together and clipping the tents into form and think, “I love India…”

campout recon no. 02

I just donned a fresh pair of socks, at 11:02 on Friday night. My feet are tired from standing all day, and they are cold, because we have to keep the windows open in Tipperary to ventilate the fumes from fresh paint (even though the painting ceased a week ago). I had a beautiful day at work today, but I have to hold off on writing about it tonight because I need to document Campout Recon No. 02. Now, I realize that Campout Recon No. 01 was not that earth-shattering, and yet, it all plays into No. 02, because without the failure to find a suitable spot in No. 01, there never would have been a need to have No. 02. Make sense? The bigger, hopefully deeper story is in No. 02. This goes kinda long, so settle in…
I met Parmesh on the road below Tipperary again, this time on Friday morning, at 6:30am. I was wearing several layers because at this hour, it was considerably colder than last time (yesterday), and the bike was fixed and running well, so we would be winding through the Himalayan foothills in the pre-sunrise chill on our way back to Dhanaulti. The drive at that hour of the morning was beautiful and quiet, no near-death experiences from oncoming buses or decrepit and seriously over-loaded jeeps coming from Chamoli. We reached our intended destination, on the road just before the first buildings of Dhanaulti without mechanical failure, and with renewed expectation to find the perfect spot before the team’s departure later in the afternoon.
Parmesh and I had a description from Edwin of where to find the camping spot—apparently a place Edwin had seen or been to sometime previously? Anyway, we had a description: the top of the hillside before Dhanaulti, a wide open field and a single house where there lives a farmer and his family. It was supposed to be about a 10-15 minute hike up the hill. That’s it. So, we reached the spot on the road that we thought was correct, and saw a trail leading through the jungle upward toward the top of the hill. We hustled up and up, slipping frequently on the slimy mud created by the recently departed monsoon rains. We reached the top of the hill. Trees. All around trees, trees and more trees. No wide open field. We looked right, we looked left and together decided to pick our way along the ridgeline goat-trails to the right, looking for a wide open flat spot where we could pitch some tents. After several minutes we arrived at a glen. All the trees were covered in bright green moss and the turf was absolutely glistening with dew in the sun that was peeking over the edge of the ridge and sparkling across the clearing. Amazing. This must be it. Wonderful—what a relief! We could easily hike to this spot with the team and have a great time for two days.
But there was an inkling immediately among both of us. This spot was nice, but did not match Edwin’s description. Was he wrong? Were we wrong? It did not match—no farmer’s house, and not that wide of an open field, just a nice glen. So we kept going. We climbed to a higher vantage point and looked out across the ridgeline. No open fields in sight. We looked back to where we had come up to the top and decided there was plenty of unseen ground over there, we needed to go back and take a look. At one point along the way back, Parmesh stopped me and asked: Why are WE out here trying to find this? If Edwin knows where it is and could describe it to us so well, then why do we need to go running through the jungle in the morning trying to find it. (He said all of this in Hindi, of course, and I actually understood him. My reply was more difficult to come by. My brain has yet to connect in the Hindi reply department, it only understands at this point). I fumbled through broken Hindi saying something to the affect: he’s just testing us! And truly, it felt like a test, because there were such specific instructions, and yet just enough left as a mystery to cause us to have to search a little and try to find such a place—if it even existed. I think at some point in this, Parmesh and I began to question whether Edwin actually knew of this place at all. Yet, on we went, scrambling and climbing along the ridgeline, all the while I was thinking: the morning is wearing on and we really should have found it by now, we need to be getting back! At last, we reached a high point on an outcropping of rocks. We looked out toward the east. There was a brighter green patch than the surrounding jungle green. A field, it seemed. It was far away from us. Then we spied a small village house with a slate roof below the field. Bingo.
We scrambled down off the rocks, trying to keep from falling to our deaths and jogged along the trail until we reached an opening in the trees above a great many terraced fields with pea-plants growing in them. There, down in the saddle below us was the farmer’s house—just one house, and above it a wide open field. The dog guarding the pea fields from monkey infiltration began barking immediately upon our emergence from the jungle and several members of the farmer’s family looked our way from their perches in the early morning sunshine.
Following a conversation I did not understand between Parmesh and the farmer (in Garhwali), we were led across the pea fields up to the bigger open field that was left fallow this season. The whole time I was walking up to the field behind Parmesh and the farmer, I kept thinking of Joshua and Caleb spying out the land and finding it to be “exceedingly good”. This was it, we had actually found it, we had passed the test! Looking out to the north from the field, we could see the greater, snowcapped Himalayas gleaming in the morning sun and to the south, the plains of Dehradun still in shadow, but clearly visible. What a spot!
While I was marveling, the conversation in Garhwali between Parmesh and the farmer continued. I could tell the tone of the conversation was growing more agitated by both men and tried to figure out what was going on. It became clear rather quickly that a negotiation had begun with the farmer for the price of our group’s stay in the field. I expected this, and was not very concerned, but actually relieved that Parmesh was there to speak to the farmer in Garhwali and breeze through the negotiation, Garhwali man to Garhwali man, not some outsider from the plains who spoke Hindi rudely to the farmer. But then I caught a few words spoken by the farmer that caused me to be concerned: “American”, “Angrezi” (English), “panch hazaar”. And in a moment I realized there was no way we would be staying in this beautiful field tonight, because the farmer had seen my white face, my foreign clothes and had made a presumption about who I was (wealthy), who Parmesh was (my well-paid guide) and had decided he needed to be in on the action. He was asking five-thousand rupees for us to camp in the field. That’s about 145 dollars. No way. I scoffed and walked briskly down, out of the field, past the farmer’s house, down a different, nicer, wider trail to the road as fast as my legs could take me. All the while, Parmesh and the farmer kept talking—he followed us all the way to the road below, all the way back to the bike, sticking firm to his 5000 rupee demand.
I refused to speak. I was fuming. I despised being perceived so in India. I rejected the assumption made about me, about Parmesh. And I was SO disappointed that my presence with Parmesh in the field caused such a situation. Why couldn’t have Edwin sent Parmesh and one of the other Indian guys to seek out the camping spot? Why cannot I just simply be friends with an Indian guy with no ulterior motives, no agenda and no strings attached, no money attached? Parmesh is not my trekking guide who scored big with the well-paying foreigner. He is my friend, truly, and I enjoy so much the way that has developed. Parmesh felt terribly awkward as we drove silently on the bike toward Dhanaulti to have some breakfast. I wanted to paint my face brown and to know Hindi fluently. I wanted to disappear and wished I had not agreed to make the visit with Parmesh to look for the spot this particular morning.
Maybe you read this and it looks like a terrible over-reaction on my part. Maybe. Unfortunately, this is not the first time something such as this has happened during my experiences in India. In fact, it happens too often, and that is partly why I recognized so quickly what was happening in the field with the farmer. Can I blame him? Who knows how many white faces have come through before I did and are paying a guide Rs. 20,000 and they do throw around rupees like it grows on trees? No, I cannot blame him, but it did feel incredibly awkward and caused me to question why I was there. How I could undo the perception(s)? Did I even want to still go camping?
As we drove back to Mussoorie in the late morning sun after a delicious breakfast of mulli parathas and village chai, I prayed about all these questions and the feelings I was wrestling with. Who could say where we were going to end up in the afternoon for our camping trip—the glen at the top of the ridge or the wide open, 5000-rupee field? Parmesh joked with me about it on the drive back and assured me that it was no problem, that he and Edwin would figure it out when we arrived there later in the afternoon.

campout recon no. 01

My mobile phone rang at 09:30 on Thursday while I was in the middle of painting the ceiling of our bathroom at Tipperary. (Yes, renovation is still going on, but more on that in a different entry.) My friend, Parmesh was on the phone telling me to meet him in 10 minutes on the road below our house. Apparently, we had been nominated by the team from church to do a little campsite reconnaissance prior to our planned camping trip for the weekend. I scrambled to wash out my paintbrush and trade out my painting shirt for some cleaner, warmer clothes. (It is the end of September and it seems like we have just skipped right from monsoon to winter). A few minutes later, I met parmesh on the road, jumped on the back of the 100cc motorbike and we were off, motoring east out of mussoorie on the way toward Dhanaulti, about an hour drive through the mountains.
As we drove along, Parmesh would have to continually downshift to make it up the slightest incline and I chuckled at the realization that my added weight on the back of the bike was giving the motor a workout. Somewhere on the road just past a small village, we downshifted again to help the little motorbike climb the slight incline and there was a “snap” and the engine raced but we did not pick up any speed. After a few seconds of trying the gears, we realized something in the transmission had snapped and none of the gears on the bike would engage. I climbed off and Parmesh pulled out the tools to see if we could figure out the problem. After a few minutes of trying a ridiculous screwdriver on stripped screw heads, I realized we weren’t going to make it out to check out the camping sites and my heart sank. Parmesh continued to tinker, banging with a wrench here, stripping more of the screw head off there, and muttering in Garhwali. We were probably an hour walk away from Mussoorie.
After I convinced Parmesh that the bike was officially broken beyond our ability to fix it, we rolled the bike back down the hill to the village we had passed earlier and caught a jeep going back out the mountains toward Dhanaulti. If we couldn’t take the bike, we would just have to get there by jeep instead. Two jeeps and about 2 hours later, we arrived at our intended destination to begin looking around for a campsite for the team.
Unfortunately, trying to accomplish this task on foot was much less effective than with a motorbike, since we had to walk along the road until we found a possible place, then hike up the side of the mountain, only to discover the land was privately owned, or there was not suitable space for four tents and twenty five people to camp for two days. After a few failed attempts, we decided to walk back toward Mussoorie on the road until a bus came by to transport us the rest of the way. Later, on the crowded bus, I wondered what we would tell the team who were eagerly expecting that Parmesh and I had picked out the perfect spot. Why did it have to be so difficult to simply pick out a place to camp? I marveled at the difference between what I expected our reconnaissance trip to be and what it had actually turned out to be. When I jumped on the bike in the morning, I was excited and full of hope for a quick trip out to the jungle to pick out a good site for the team and be back before noon to continue helping with the painting at Tipperary. But by the time I got back to the house at 3:30 in the afternoon, I was tired and sapped of hope for where we were going to camp for the weekend. Thankfully, Edwin took the news well about his broken motorbike; we got it fixed for 20 rupees (about 50 cents) and planned to try again very early Friday morning. We were planning to leave town on Friday afternoon by 2:00 for the weekend campout.

i saw the light

As I write this, sitting on a low table in Tipperary, my feet are resting on a pile of pine-fresh lumber, there is rubble all over the floor and a fine layer of dust covers everything, including the inside of my nostrils. Almost all the furniture has been removed, the wood burning stove or bucari is removed from its place in the center of the room, there is barely enough electricity coming through the wires to power the one incandescent bulb in the only lamp remaining, and yet twilight is gleaming in through a new opening in the roof. Tipperary, the house I live in, is under renovation. For the last two days, and perhaps at least another four or five, carpenters have been breaking through the old slate/lime/mud and corrugated tin sheets to install glorious translucent fiberglass sheets on part of the roof of our house. Today, sunlight streamed in through the ceiling, filling the interior with daylight. It was magnificent. You see, for the last few years, we have been living in what we un-affectionately call “the cave” because our house is dark, dank and generally depressing. What is remarkable to me about this renovation story, however, is the other improvement projects and fixes that it has initiated.
For the last two years, the shelf in the utility room has contained various un-dealt-with items from the previous tenants—empty cans of roach killer and wasp spray, broken pottery painted by a child, moldy rags, broken baskets etc. all covered in dust and cobwebs. Strangely, none of us, including me, have ever cleaned this mess, partly because we rarely go in there, but mostly because none of us really wants to deal with it.
Our kitchen is small, it has four drawers. We use one. It holds the silverware. The others contain(ed) various things left there by the previous tenant (again). Drawer number three: a half-used box of lasagna noodles, blue and pink bendy-straws and a bundle of plastic chopsticks. Drawer number two: only an empty roll of plastic wrap and a roll of tin foil that had melded to the cardboard roll. Drawer four: empty.
The towel rack in my bathroom is booby-trapped. It keeps one on his toes when attempting to hang a towel on it, because actually only two and a half screws fix it to the tile wall. My roommate Matthew likes it that way, who knows why… It is an exercise of extraordinary dexterity to balance a towel just right so that its weight does not exceed the minimalist friction with which the rusty screw clings to the plaster. Inevitably the friction fails, the rusty screw “plinks” to the floor (along with the towel) and rolls under the shelf.
I could go on, but I’ll stop. The point is, suddenly, with all this daylight streaming into the place where I have lived in darkness for two years, I am actually taking some ownership and care in the place. I cleaned off the utility room shelf, vacuumed up the dust and cobwebs, scrubbed the grime, added an electrical outlet and made a hole for the dryer outlet through the window, and placed folded towels and bed sheets on the shelf. (We used to set them on a chair in the living room “cave”.) I cleaned out the leftovers from the drawers in the kitchen and scrubbed how-many-years-of-grime from the face of the cabinets. “Did the previous lady even know how to clean??” I pounded a wood shim into the bathroom wall with glue and added two un-rusty, complete screws to the bathroom towel rack which is presently and successfully supporting two clean, folded towels. Matthew will be so disappointed when he gets back next week.
The remaining lumber on which my feet are resting is for skylight #2 in the darkest part of our “cave”. Who knows what inspiration that will bring…