My First Night In Nepal

(A continuation of K-k-k-k-k-k-Kathmandu)

 

My senses were buzzing when I stepped out of the airport, looking for P’s dad. He spotted me before I could spot him. P’s eleven year old cousin handed me a small bouquet of flowers and said “Welcome C-didi!” while P’s dad grabbed my bag and patted me on the back, a big goofy smile on his face. P’s dad always looks so serious, perhaps a bit intimidating, in pictures because no one in the family ever smiles for photographs (even when prompted!), but when you meet him in person that’s when you know how gentile and friendly he is.

 

The only thing I could manger to utter for the first twenty minutes I was on the ground was “I can’t believe I’m actually here. I can’t believe I’m in Kathmandu.” I said it on the way to the taxi P’s dad had arranged. I said it while we drove through the crowded city streets from the airport. I repeated it when P’s dad asked how I was doing. Everything was a bit of a blur until we reached P’s house.

 

The car turned off the road into a small single lane dirt and rock path, and squeezed between a few buildings. Then it turned a corner and to the right was a large lot being used to grow vegetables by neighbors, and to the left was a wall with a metal gate, the house peeking out from behind. The gate was open and P’s mother, aunt and grandfather were standing in the road waiting to greet me. Gulp, it was now or never.

 

Before arriving in KTM I struggled with how this initial greeting would go. Should I crouch to touch their feet? Will they find this weird? Or respectful? Who should I greet first? Does it matter? Did they expect me to be more American or more Nepali? I was hoping my time in India would solve this, and I peppered my homestay mother in Jaipur with questions about what the proper etiquette would be, but every family is different so it was hard to know. P had said not to worry, but he also wasn’t there to lead by example.

 

Luckily when the car stopped everything happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to think too much. As I stepped out of the car Kakabua (P’s grandfather) had a huge grin. He kept mumbling “Welcome! Welcome!” and wanted to grab my bag and bring it into the house for me. J Phupu (P’s aunt) stared, occasionally she’d laugh, but mostly she stared, sizing me up. P’s mom said, “Come” and led me inside, while his little cousin grabbed my hand to walk with me.

 

The family led me through the entrance, told me to leave my shoes and gave me slippers. I followed them up the stairs to a room that P and his brother shared as kids. “You stay in P’s room, okay?” Mamu said. I left my bag and was brought to the next room where everyone sat staring at me. When I am comfortable with people I am never at a loss for words, but when I’m the outsider, it’s tough to know what to say. I’m sure I looked pretty awkward waiting for them to ask me questions not sure how to make “small talk.”

 

Mamu ran upstairs to grab drinks and cookies for everyone (Mamu likes to make sure everyone is stuffed beyond capacity). I reiterated that I couldn’t believe that I was actually in Kathmandu (I must have sounded like an idiot, repeating myself), and that I had heard a lot about the city and was excited to see it. I also mentioned that I was happy to meet everyone in the family, because P had told me so much about them, particularly Kakabua, to which Kakabua started to talk about his love for P, scurrying to his room to pull out old mementos and bring them to show me in the sitting room.

 

P’s dad felt comfortable speaking English, although like P he is more on the quieter side, and P’s young cousin was learning the language in school, and could be quite colloquial with me once she got over her initial shyness. P’s grandfather speaks enough English to tell interesting stories (with lots of miming action) although I think he has more trouble understanding others, and communication isn’t always two-ways. P’s aunt, a Nepali language and literature professor at a local university, could also speak, although not as comfortably, and P’s mom was the least comfortable. We struggled to communicate, and her sentences were very short (generally two or three words). She often mixed up pronouns (referring to P as “she”) to comical effect.

 

I could see J Phupu staring at me from the corner of my eye and after sometime I turned to look at her straight on. She smiled and said in the slow, careful, deliberate way she speaks English, “I can’t… believe… P… fell in love!” as if it were truly amazing.

 

A little while later P’s mom brought in a small old notebook, and J Phupu explained that P had made it as a seven or eight year old. It was one of those elementary school assignments where kids are asked to write a few sentences about themselves and draw a picture to match. P’s mom and aunt quickly flipped through the pages and landed on one that said, “Someday I will get married to a person my family will pick.” I just smiled, nodded and said, “Interesting,” pretending not to notice the irony.

 

P’s dad insisted I call my mother at home, as well as P, his brother and his cousin (P’s younger cousin’s older sister). My mother cautioned me to “be safe” while P said, “I can’t believe you are sitting in my home right now!” P’s brother and cousin talked about stuff they wanted me to bring back to the US from Nepal, and then the phone was passed around for each family member to have a few minutes to say hi.

 

By then it was dinner time. P’s mom ushered me upstairs and I sat at the table in the kitchen. She put a big spoon on the table in front of me and P’s dad smiled. He had eaten with P and I in the US at the apartment where a group of us were living the summer before, and he knew I had the “special” South Asian skill of eating with my hand. “She doesn’t need a spoon!” he said triumphantly, “She knows what to do.”

 

I’ve talked about eating with P’s family before. The sheer amount of rice is a bit daunting. I’m also a slow eater (always have been, always will be), plus as the center of attention for the meal, I was even more self-conscious. Again my stomach was doing flip flops, and I had to eat at extra slow speed just to keep the food down and settled. It was delicious, I was just nervous, and tired, and still worried about making a bad impression.

 

Declaring that I could eat without a spoon made everyone even more intent to watch me, making me even more nervous, making me eat even slower. By the time the rest of the family had finished dinner (including P’s young cousin), I had barely eaten anything, prompting questions like “Do you like the food? Are you feeling okay?” and finally to my own embarressment, “Do you need the spoon back?” Alas, demoted.  

 

When I got up from the table I washed my hands, but didn’t rinse my mouth out with water (would they expect me to do this ritual? Or would they be worried about me consuming water? I decided to skip it). P’s mom noticed and probably made a mental note to talk to me about it later (I was advised the next day that rinsing my mouth out with water after every meal was very important so as not to pollute the gods).

 

We ate dinner quite late, so afterward the family sat together in the sitting room to watch tv before bed. It was December, and although not as cold as New England, there is no central heating, so we sat wrapped in blankets and shawls, sitting close together, with a small electric heater nearby.

 

After watching a few shows with the family (a mix of local Nepali serials and HIndi language programs from India, neither of which I could understand, although P’s younger cousin volunteered to give me the synopsis during commercials) they asked if I was tired, and at that point I was absolutely exhausted. As I climbed into bed I was greeted again by the whole family. They made sure I had a wool hat to keep my head warm in the night, extra blankets, and P’s aunt and dad tucked me in. I probably reminded them of how much they missed their own kids who were in the US, and with their tenderness towards me, they could pretend, by extension, that they were tucking in their own.

 

I think as soon as they turned out the light I was dead asleep.

K-k-k-k-k-k-Kathmandu

My senior year of university I decided to spend my fall semester studying in north India. My parents were furious. I had already spent two semesters abroad- my freshman year in France and Senegal, and my junior year in Kenya and Tanzania. Since high school I had babbled on about wanting to study in Africa, so my parents had time to prepare for that, and in my freshman year—France probably sounded “safe” and “normal,” (not to mention they probably hoped I’d get the travel bug out of my system before the inevitable Kenya trip) so they could rally behind that—but India?

“You’re using that college like an expensive travel agency!”

“How will you get a job some day if you never study in a real classroom?”

“I bet if she were dating someone from Vietnam or Brazil, she’d want to travel there next!”

Finally my dad acquiesced, “We both know she was never going to join the ‘glee club’ and participate in normal college life, if it isn’t costing us extra, then let her do what she wants, because she will probably just do it anyway.” (huh? Glee club? Normal college life?)

“Fine. But you have to be home for Christmas. No matter what. Period.”

I should mention that the year before I conveniently didn’t tell my parents I was missing Christmas to stay in East Africa for research… until I already had a university grant and couldn’t come home. They weren’t happy, and probably figured I planned to do the same thing again.

The truth was, that was my plan. My options were to either graduate early, take a semester of random elective credits, or travel somewhere interesting and learn about a new region and culture. So you guess which direction I went. And yes, it helped that P was South Asian. If I could have figured out a way to quickly add a study abroad option in Nepal to my schedule I probably would have, but my university had an India program, and it was easier to make that jump.

My plan was to spend a semester in India, learn the basics of the language, culture, religion, etc, then meet P in Kathmandu for a month after the program. I was hoping to take Nepali language classes, meet his family, get to see his home city with him, and then come back for my final semester. The rigid stipulation that I had to be home by Christmas squashed that, and P ultimately decided not to travel home during the break if I was only going to be there for 4 days. But how could I travel so close and not stop in for a visit? A flight from Delhi to KTM is only about an hour. Who knew if I’d ever be that close to Nepal again? I was determine to go… with or without P (although definitely with his blessing!)

I had a great time in India. I learned an incredible amount in a short period of time, and as the days wound closer to the end of the program, the more nervous I became. Reality dawned on me, I had already made the plan and I couldn’t back out… I was going to meet P’s family. Alone. By myself. I was petrified.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I’d met P’s dad for a few days when he graduated from university the year before. His dad was nice and friendly (I can talk about this another time), but traveling to his home, alone, in another country, felt a lot more official, and scary. I was going to meet his aunt, his mom (who I think was still a bit worried about the whole “American” girl thing), his cousin and his grandfather, and P wasn’t going to be around to facilitate the meeting process.

Most students spent the last few days of our program in Delhi finishing final projects, finding shops to buy last minute souvenirs for friends and family, some even had their hands decorated in henna. Meanwhile I was spending time at the Nepali embassy getting my visa, and purchasing my plane ticket to Kathmandu. I had that old Bob Seger song stuck in my head for days… “K-k-k-k-k-k-Kathmandu/I think it’s really where I’m goin’ to/Hey, if I ever get out of here/I’m goin’ to Kathmandu.” It was totally cliché, but true, and it was wedged in my head until I landed at the KTM airport.

Then all the other students left. I accompanied them to the airport to see them fly home to the United States, and I was left waiting for my own flight. I was excited but trembling. I was so worried (I spend too much time worrying) of making a bad impression. A friend and I spent days looking through my collection of clothes trying to find nice looking outfits (I was only taking a small bag, and leaving the rest of my luggage in a storage area at the Delhi airport.)

Nearly all the clothes I had were Indian salwar kameez, kurta tops and long Indian design printed cotton skirts. I felt comfortable wearing these things in India, especially since I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, and Western travelers in places such as India or Africa tend to dress a bit odd anyway. Either all “ethnic,” or all khaki jacket safari-type clothes with lots of pockets, or kind of hippy-styled. I blended in to this crowd for the most part, but I was worried if I wore things that were too South Asian P’s family would find me strange, but I didn’t really have any proper American clothes either. I couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that while in America P’s dad wore a suit and tie every day, even if he was just going out to the grocery store. I didn’t have anything fancy. I felt woefully unprepared in every way.

The flight from Delhi to Kathmandu was beautiful. Not too long after leaving Delhi one can gaze out the window of the plane and watch as you fly straight at a high wall of Himalayan mountains. I remember sitting next to a western business man going to Nepal for a holiday. He was chatting away, but my hands were shaking with nerves and my stomach was doing flip flops. When the plane breached the valley wall it flew within view of some small houses on the mountain ridge, my first glimpse at real Nepali life. I was glued to the window for the final approach, shaky hands and all. When the plane finally landed at the tiny airport in Kathmandu I was a bit in shock. It was hard to believe I was actually there, in a place I had heard so much about, knew so many people from, people I was half way around the world from at that very moment.

The national airport is so small that you have to disembark the plane from a stair case that is wheeled up to the plane door from across the tarmac, then you walk along the pavement to the back entrance of the airport. This leads to a narrow walkway with windows on both sides, although the windows are a bit reflective so you can barely see the passengers waiting on the other side getting ready to disembark on the plane you just flew in on. I couldn’t help but try to catch my reflection in the glass and fuss with my hair and outfit the entire walk to the immigration counter. I wanted to look presentable, confident, somehow dignified. I was still shaking when I handed over my passport to the immigration clerk (who gently teased me about my nose piercing and asked if I was Nepali, an obvious joke from my pinky-whiteness), and walked downstairs to pick my bag  from the baggage claim.

Then I followed the crowd toward the doorway that led to the arrival area of the airport. Just outside the main door was the waiting area for friends and family. From a distance I could see all the people waiting, a sea of unfamiliar faces, and I knew P’s dad was waiting somewhere out there in the crowd.

3 Degrees of Seperation… (or less)

I’ve discussed this once before in Nepali Ho? But I think it warrants another re-telling.

Nepal is a small place, with an even smaller number of large population centers—Kathmandu, Chitwan (Narayangarh/Bharatpur), Pokhara, Biratnagar—if you meet someone in the US, particularly someone in university or a graduate of university, chances are they are from one of these four places, or very close to one (or at least attended high school in one of these places).  Thus it seems like everyone knows everyone else, that they can find a connection in three people or less.

On Sunday we had R, S and N, AS over for a waffle brunch. The joke is that R has such a huge family she is related to everyone in Kathmandu, and N just simply knows everyone period. It was the first time that N and R sat down to compare notes, and I’m sure that if they really wanted to they probably could have gone back and forth identifying random acquaintances that they both knew… all day. Since the conversation was mostly in Nepali, I wasn’t really listening, but then I heard a name that even I knew! N asked if R knew “Jiwan,” R said “oh yeah, Jiwan, of course, ___’s brother” and I was able to jump in and add, “Me too! It’s D’s brother-in-law… his cousin-sister’s husband!” How many degrees of separation is that?

When I see Nepali people meet for the first time, I feel like there is a back and forth, back and forth, like a greeting ritual, to find that connection—who do you know?—it’s almost always inevitably found.

On Saturday night R, S, P and I went out to dinner in a nearby city to meet up with some older American friends of S and P’s from when they lived in Maine. The friends were in town for a dentists conference, and since it was a rare opportunity to touch base, we went to a fancier place than usual. S choose a swanky Indian/French fusion restaurant, with a contemporary South Asian style. When we walked through the door R noted, “This place must be owned by Nepalis, look at the masks on the wall…”

We sat down, met the friends, and started what would be a long conversation-filled dinner. Our waitress wasn’t South Asian, but at one point a South Asian man brought us a round of soup. A few minutes after he left P leaned in and whispered, “I know you are going to find this funny… but, I think the guy who brought the soup… was my cousin.”

“What?” I asked.

“Yeah, you know that wedding we went to a few months ago. I think it’s the bride’s brother.”

A little while later when I got up to use the restroom I tracked down the waitress and asked her who the Nepali waiter was, she said there were a few and gave me their names. When I got back I asked P if any of the names sounded familiar. Sure enough, it was the guy. When the food came P said, “Namaste bhai” and his distant cousin was surprised until the recognition clicked.

It’s a small small world. So small in fact that I can’t help but wonder how many people out there stumbled upon this blog and have figured out who we (C and P) really are (I’ve already discovered one… right Abhi?). Even if you don’t know who we are specifically, I’m sure if we sat down and went back and forth a few times, we would eventually find acquaintances in common!

Perhaps in 3 people or less…

USPS, Where’s the Hindu Love?

I was chatting with a high school friend yesterday about postage stamps. I know, random, but that’s how conversations usually go–flowing from one topic to the next.

I’ve always been interested in finding unique stamps at the US Post Office. It started when I was an elementary school student and I was writing to several pen-pals. I liked going to the post office and looking at my postage choices. I’m not a collector, I just find the ubiquitous American flag stamps kind of boring, particularly when I know that the postal service releases whole collections of unique stamps each year, I just prefer to buy these.

Old habits die hard, and as an adult, when I have letters to send (even if it is a bill or something mundane), I still stop in the local post office and I ask the counter worker what “interesting” stamps they might have in stock. I still exclusively buy the most colorful or unusual. I’ve had stamps commemorating artists I’d never heard of (most recently Charles and Ray Eames… a husband and wife post-WWII furniture designing team). I’ve had moon landing stamps, Elvis stamps, and stamps of actors from the 40s and 50s. I’ve had stamps of dinosaurs, and zoo animals, US states and unusual plants. The stamps that are available always change, and I always have something different. I think it is fun, and I particularly like getting letters with unusual stamps. It makes me think that the person sending me the letter took a little extra time thinking about letter writing and sending something to me.

The same is true during the Christmas season when I send my holiday cards. Rather than use the stamps that most people (I know) use, I like buying Eid or Kwanzaa stamps. I think originally (back in high school or early college) I did this to be a bit rebellious. I have no idea if other people notice what stamps I put on my envelopes, but I thought it might irk some people that I was sending Christmas cards with Islamic holiday or African-American culture stamps. I didn’t want to make people mad, but I hoped it would spark discussion. I don’t think it ever really has, if anyone notices the stamps they probably just put it in the “another weird thing that C does” category.

2009 Kwanzaa stamp

The Eid design doesn’t really change, but the Kwanzaa designs do, so now I usually buy Kwanzaa stamps for the holiday. These stamps also remind me of my first love, Africa, especially the stamp from 2009. I like asking for the Kwanzaa stamps specifically at the post office window and seeing the surprised look on the postal worker’s face, since they probably don’t expect someone like me to ask for them.

I also like buying the stamps because I think it is important to use your purchasing dollars for causes you think are important. If not many people buy Eid or Kwanzaa stamps, the post office might stop making them, and since most people that I know buy Christmas themed stamps, I figure the bases for that holiday are covered. In addition, I think it is important to support the US government when they acknowledge holidays that are outside the “traditional” popular culture, like when President Obama attended the Diwali lamp lighting festival in the White House…visibility and acknowledgement make people think.

So when we were talking about stamps I said to my friend, “if there were Hindu stamps, I’d buy a whole sheet” and that got me thinking, does the US Postal Service have Hindu commemorative stamps? I don’t remember seeing any over the years of asking for stamps. I did a quick google search, and realized that I couldn’t find anything that would prove me wrong. There is a company that will make Hindu god stamps, but it is a private company, not the USPS. In 2010 the postal service is releasing a Mother Teresa stamp, which of course is great, but doesn’t necessarily celebrate Hindu culture. I went to the USPS website and did a quick term search for “Hindu,” “Diwali,” and “India.” I got nothing for the first two, and returns for (Native American) Indian stamps, and Indiana stamps for the last term search.

I’m surprised there isn’t a commemorative stamp for the people of Hindu heritage in the United States. At the very least there should be a Diwali stamp. My search was quick, so maybe I missed something (and if I did, please, someone let me know!) but otherwise I’m going to send a quick “suggestion email” to the USPS. If you think there should be a stamp as well, feel free to join me in sending an email suggestion.

“Eating Animals”- Children and Food

I started reading a book on Sunday night that I am pretty excited about: Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I saw it recently in a bookstore and the title intrigued me enough to pick it up, but when I read the description on the inside cover, it really hooked me—

“Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood-facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf- his causal questioning took on an urgency…”

I’ve mentioned my vegetarianism before. I’m not a veggie proselytizer, I’m not out to recruit people, and you won’t see me chaining myself to a slaughterhouse door, but my own vegetarianism is important to me. The more I hear about the factory farming process in documentaries like Food, Inc, and when I read about potential health issues from some types of meat consumption, it makes me feel more confident in my dietary choices.

I’ve also mentioned before that P is an avowed chicken lover. Of course, I’d  be happy (and probably his veggie mother would too) to have him phase meat out of his diet, but I also don’t expect him to give up something he truly, honestly loves. P has toyed with the idea of making the switch, but I don’t think it will ever happen. I’ve been told on many occasions that my veg momos don’t hold a candle to the chicken or pork momos my other friends voraciously consume, and I can see the excited glint in P’s eye when there is a nice goat curry or a packet of deer jerky around.

So that brings us to the discussion of how to raise children when and if we have some one day. I’ve already made my feelings on the subject known. I’d very much prefer to raise vegetarian kids, and once they are older (middle school/high school aged) they can decide for themselves, and I’ll happily live with their decision. P, on the other hand, though less vocal, has stated that he would prefer to raise kids that enjoyed chicken momo, etc. There isn’t a whole lot that P and I don’t agree on, but this is one.

Other friends have weighed in on the argument—“If you raise them veg, then they will probably not like meat anyway… you’ll be influencing them from the start! That’s not fair to them!” but I kind of feel the same way, if you start them off eating meat, what if they never think about life without meat? Or what if they decide later in life to be veg and they are uncomfortable with having grown up eating meat and they question me as their parent for not sticking up for them? What if they are angry that I denied them the pleasure of meat as a child? Since my own vegetarianism is so important to me, how can I morally let them eat meat when they are too young to make the decision for themselves?

That is what intrigued me so much about Foer’s book. I’m very keen to see what conclusion he comes to. It’s been quite interesting thus far, even though I’ve only just started.

One issue he raised which I had never really thought about before is food as a storytelling device. In his introduction he talks about his grandmother who survived World War II as a Jewish girl evading the Nazis by keeping on the run and eating whatever scraps of food she could find along the way. This personal history greatly affected her relationship with food. Her signature dish was chicken with carrots, and she would serve Foer and his brother this dish while telling stories over the dinner table. He says,

“Feeding my child is not like feeding myself: it matters more. It matters because food matters (his physical health matters, the pleasure of eating matters), and because the stories that are served with food matter. These stories bind our family together, and bind our family to others. Stories about food are stories about us—our history and our values. Within my family’s Jewish tradition, I came to learn that food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable…”

and later notes,

“We are not only the tellers of our stories, we are the stories themselves. If my wife and I raise our son as a vegetarian, he will not eat his great-grandmother’s singular dish, will never receive that unique and most direct expression of her love, will perhaps never think of her as the Greatest Chef Who Ever Lived. Her primal story, our family’s primal story, will have changed.”

Wow, food for thought (no pun intended).

I’ll have to let you know what I think once I finish the book.

Musings on Winter…

Not to leave you guys with something so heavy over the weekend, I wanted to chat about something happier, or at least kind of amusing.

My office (a converted old house on the edge of the university campus) is on a relatively steep hill. Last night we had a short lived storm of ice and snow, and today it is quite cold. Whenever it gets slippery out I hear the whirr whirr of rotating tires stuck on the hill outside my office. From my window I’ve seen mail trucks slip into snow banks, small cars try valiantly to make it up the hill only to give up three quarters of the way and have to slide back down the hill backwards. I’ve seen lots of fish tailing vehicles and snake like moves to try and coax cars up the hill. I haven’t seen anyone get hurt, instead it is more like one of those hidden camera tv specials, where everyone tries to do something, and everyone comedically fails.

When a lot of people think about Nepal, I think people think about ice and snow. Of course the mountains have many year-round glaciers, and in the winter the high altitude villages get quite a lot of wintery weather, but a good portion of Nepal is snow free. In 2007 the Kathmandu valley saw its first snow fall in 60 years and I’m not sure if the Terai (plains area boarding India) has ever seen snow.

Meanwhile I grew up in Central New York. What I like to call “the land of ice and snow.” For some (if you are not from there), Northern New York might not be the first place you think of when you think of nasty winter weather… instead you might think of Alaska or Minnesota or Colorado, but our location on the eastern edge of the Great Lakes positions us well for annual snow blasts.

Because of this, we Upstaters pride ourselves on our “amazing” winter abilities and “survival skills,” and P calls me out on this. I don’t mind driving through blizzards, and he scolds me for passing people on the highway during snow storms. I take a zen-like approach if my car starts to slip and slide, I’m one with the car, and through a combo of breaks, gas and steering, the car stabilizes and off we go again. You bet I made it up that hill to work this morning, whirr whirr be damned.

Yeah, that's right... this isn't a photo from Antarctica, this is a photo taken during the 2006-2007 storm season when the BBC featured us. That black spec is a car, driving between the towering snow banks.

When my students from tropical countries start coming in to our office in November and December complaining about the cold, nasty New England weather, I share with them stories about my home town. My particular favorite is to talk about the winter of 2006-2007 when the city was hit with two major snowstorms, burying the town in about 13 feet of snow in a matter of a week or two. As an avid BBC reader, I couldn’t believe it when my little town made it on their news site!

A few weeks back, my dad sent me one of those email forwards, the kind that says, “you know you are from ____ if” and I wanted to share some of my favorites…

“If you’re proud that your region makes the national news 96 nights a year because Saranac Lake is the coldest spot in the nation, and Syracuse gets more snow than any other major city in the US , you might live in Upstate NY.”—there is definitely a pride thing, seeing your home town featured on The Weather Channel.

“You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching.”—oh yeah baby!

“You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.” – so true! We always had to do this!

“You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.”—it definitely feels like that sometimes.

Where we live now isn’t so bad, and I feel like a hardened winter weather warrior when people start to freak out about an approaching storm. The point is–P might come from the former “Himalayan kingdom” but I think I hold the “Queen of Snow” title in our household.

Mothers and Daughters: A Momentary Rant

I’ll admit, I’ve been struggling this week, and it probably doesn’t help that I have been feeling a bit under the weather. I’m sorry to air so much dirty laundry, but I’ve got to get it off my chest.

Basically, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about my relationship with my mother. It is not something I can solve over night, but I think I’m reaching a point where I am truly tired of the road we have been heading down for a very long time.

Like many young women in the US, my mom and I have had our issues, our differences, but I think our problems go beyond the regular disagreements about things. There have been various times in the past fifteen years where we have not been on speaking terms, and I know that we both hold grudges for things that have happened in the past. But I realized, during a long emotional blow out we had over the telephone on Sunday afternoon, that I am drained. The fight took a lot out of me, and I’m very frustrated that every serious conversation we try to have with one another deteriorates so quickly into deeply personal and hurtful screaming matches.

As I’ve moved deeper into my adulthood, I’ve tried to figure out why my parents act they way that they do, particularly when I struggle to understand their perspective. I think a lot of kids do this. It is part of that realization that no one is perfect. This tactic has helped me interact with my father, and understand him a little bit more, even though I wouldn’t necessarily describe our relationship as close, or that I agree with everything that he has done.

Whether my mother believes it or not, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand her as well. I realize that she carries around with her a deep and painful feeling in her heart from my parents’ divorce (nearly a decade ago) one that I am sure I’ll never fully understand unless I go through something similar (which I really hope not to). Although I would love for her to put the memories and hard feelings of the divorce aside, I fear that no matter how long she lives, she will probably never be able to let go of this negativity deep inside. I personally feel that this is keeping her back from really living, but trying to talk to her about it also gets me nowhere, and often leads to other screaming matches, so I think I’ve officially given up.

I realize that she has had to struggle a lot—particularly financially—in the years since their divorce. She moved to another region of the country, started her own life, and had to learn how to take care of herself. That takes a lot of guts and courage. She is in her fifties and works two jobs, sometimes sixty or seventy hours a week. I give her a lot of credit for that and I recognize that these things are not easy. I’ve told her this, multiple times. I can’t guarantee that she hears it though.

I also recognize that she does not feel it is fair that her life has not turned out the way she wanted it to. I can understand being angry about that.  But I wish my mother would realize that there are other people in the world with far worse situations, and that divorce is a lot more common than anyone would really care to acknowledge. She is not alone in this situation, and she can move beyond it, if she could let go. Perhaps once my youngest sister finishes college, and the old financial ties between my parents are severed, she might be more successful in this.

But, now I need to figure out how to take some of my own advice—letting go. For as with my mother, whose main problem in her life is her relationship with my father, my main source of frustration, anger and hurtfulness in my own life is my relationship with her.

If I may take a minute or two to rant…

Lord knows, I’m not perfect. I can be feisty, stubborn and argumentative. I say things that get me in trouble, whether I mean to or not, but overall most of my relationships are very positive—sincere and genuine. Most people probably couldn’t imagine me seething in anger. But the one person in my life that can truly make me boil, who really knows how to flip every switch that turns me into a crazy fire breathing dragon, is my mother.

I just don’t appreciate being picked on for all of the important things in my life that she doesn’t understand. Even if her idea of an enjoyable evening doesn’t include a roomful of international friends, and intercultural food, or dressing in international clothes, that doesn’t mean that it is weird or bad. I get that she doesn’t feel the same way about these things, I got that a long time ago, and I’m not passing judgment on her, even if I try occasionally to introduce her to new things… food, music, movies, etc.

Just because I don’t have the same religious convictions, or personal interests, or lifestyle choices, doesn’t mean that I’ve made bad decisions in my life. I don’t like being told I have no identity, or that I blindly reflect the identities of those around me, because I think I’ve put a great deal of thought, research and understanding into the choices I’ve made. Telling me I don’t have an identity feels like she is telling me that my life has no meaning. Who wants to hear that?

And I wish she would stop punishing me for unconsciously reminding her of my father, and punishing me for leaving home a year before I started college because I couldn’t live in the same house with her anymore. At that time the environment of the household was really unhealthy for everyone. I’m sorry it hurt her, but I think it would have been worse if I stayed. I can’t change the things that have happened.

I’m really happy, and enjoy the life that I have made for myself, and I really truly wish that she could see that and not question everything that I do. If I prefer not to spend my money on fancy expensive things, if I prefer not to dress in the way she thinks women should (make up, hair products, form fitting clothes), if I prefer to spend an afternoon working in the garden or reading a book instead of going to a shopping mall, I think that is okay. I’m not the first person in the world to feel that way.

I don’t want to stop being in contact with her, but I don’t want to have all the negativity any more. Life is too short, and there are so many other things to do. Getting off of the phone heaving with sobs and shaking with anger is not fun.

So I don’t really know where to go from here. I’d love to have a closer relationship, but I don’t trust her. I’d love to have her  more active and engaged in my life, but that is difficult when she feels most of my decisions are bad or wrong. I don’t want to just smile and nod to appease her, because I don’t think that solves any of our problems.

And the thing that scares me the most is that I might act out in the same way in the future. My mother also didn’t have a good relationship with her own mother, and I don’t want the cycle to continue if I have children some day. I really don’t want a toxic family relationship with the next generation.

So for now I am keeping my distance. I’m going to try and avoid conflict, because my past approach of confronting the conflict has continued to fail miserably. I know I am not 100% right, but I know I am not 100% wrong either.

And lastly, I am glad that even if I don’t have her support or friendship, I have the support of a great network of other people. There is saying somewhere that goes something like “it’s not always the family that you are born into, but the family you create” that helps the most.

Earthquakes

I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about earthquakes.

As we have all watched the devastation in Haiti over the past two weeks, it is hard to imagine the terrible destruction and chaos that has descended on this small (historically, politically, and environmentally) unlucky nation. The weekend before the quake I was re-reading a few of my favorite Edwidge Danticat books after enjoying her beautiful and sad memoir “Brother, I’m Dying” about her Haitian childhood. After immersing myself so completely in these stories about Haitian culture, history, and people, it made the photos from the news so much more vivid and horrifying. In fact, yesterday I read in a New Yorker piece that one of the characters from her memoir, her elder cousin Maxo, was crushed when his house collapsed upon him. My heart and sincere warm wishes go out to those affected by the quake.

The fault splits Pakistan and Nepal in half

Earthquakes take on a scary new reality when you know people from Nepal. The entire country is situated above the point on the earth’s surface where the Indo-Australian tectonic plate is actively being rammed beneath the Eurasian plate, causing, for millennia, the Himalayas to be thrusted ever higher into the sky.

Many parts of the South Asian region are prone to tremors. The only two times I have ever felt an earthquake in my life was during a six month period that I lived in North India. One earthquake was almost unnoticeable, I felt the earth shimmy while I sat on the stone steps of an old Jain temple. At first I thought I was feeling dizzy from dehydration until people from outside the temple told us what had happened. The second time the shaking woke me up in the middle of the night, although I was too confused from sleep to know what was happening. I didn’t put two and two together until later that morning when I read about the quake in the newspaper.

So when events like the major earthquake in Haiti, or the 2004 tsunami, create headlines across the globe, they rekindle the very real and possible fear in people that something like this could (and unfortunately probably will) happen in Nepal someday. My friend KS (who was in Thailand during the tsunami, but luckily not on the coast) watches the news and shakes her head, “Our country sits right above the faults. We are overdue for a big quake. It makes me so nervous.”

The last major earthquake to hit Nepal was in 1934, when almost 20,000 people were killed. Without many roads or infrastructure, it was difficult to get to outlying villages. Additionally, over 25% of residential homes in Nepal were lost and a number of great landmarks and national treasures were destroyed.

The remaining Dharahara tower of the pair that once stood before 1934

I was reminded of this when I traveled to Nepal for the first time. P’s family took me to Dharahara, a tall white tower built in 1832 by the prime minister Bhimsen Thapa for his niece Queen Lalit Tripura Sundari. He built Dharahara next to a similar tower that he had earlier built for himself which was eleven stories high (2 stories higher than Dharahara). The two towers survived a large earthquake in the 1830s, but I was told that Bhimsen’s tower was destroyed in the 1934 quake, leaving only two of the eleven stories behind as a reminder of everything that was shattered in 1934.

As with Haiti, many of the buildings in Kathmandu are made of concrete and cinder block, with very little “earthquake proof” reinforcement. Additionally, the population of the Kathmandu valley has literally exploded in the past decade due, in part, to villagers flocking to the city in the hopes of escaping the Maoists/army violence in the countryside. Since the KTM valley is pretty well defined topographically, the city doesn’t have a lot of room to expand outward. Thus people are claiming more space for themselves and their families by building upwards—now you sometimes find very skinny tall houses to save on space. A quake of significant magnitude has the potential to absolutely devastate the densely populated city.

Also similarly to Haiti, political turmoil, lack of current infrastructure, a small national airport with one landing strip, and few roads leading to current medical facilities could further complicate rescue efforts. At least Haiti, as an island, allowed medical ships from the US to medi-vac severely injured patience to overcrowded floating navy hospitals. Landlocked Nepal would have to fly victims to India or Pakistan, if anywhere at all.

Looking at the pictures in Haiti reminds us all how fragile and delicate life can be. A reminder that isn’t always pleasant to think about.

A “Female” Taboo

A few days ago AS, N, P and I had dinner together and got into an interesting discussion about female menstruation taboos in Nepal. I don’t know if other people would be turned off by this topic, so I am warning you all outright in case you don’t want to read further.

Along the lines of the toilet paper discussion, sometimes things that are deemed to be really private are some of the things that I’m most curious about…

Anyway, I forget how our dinner topic began, but I remember a few years ago P and I somehow started talking about the taboo.

P was telling me about a time when he was young, and he noticed that for a few days each month his dad would do all the family cooking instead of his mom. As Little P, he couldn’t understand why this was happening, so one day he decided to ask at the dinner table. Uncharacteristically his grandfather shushed him up, saying it was an inappropriate topic of conversation, and something he shouldn’t be thinking about.

Little P was perplexed, he didn’t really understand. Eventually he found out that his father cooked for a few days each month because at those times his mother was menstruating and in traditional Nepali culture menstruating women are considered “unclean” and are not allowed to touch food that others will eat. Some strict families might not even serve the woman food in the same room as the rest of the family during these restricted times.

I found this both fascinating and terribly embarrassing. Particularly during my adolescence, I remember being very much a prude when it came to my body. I didn’t want people knowing what was happening to it, and I was horrified to think that if I had grown up in Nepal, it would basically be advertised to my entire family… even my brothers and father and grandfather, that I was having my period. Ick, who wants that?

It also made me really worried the first few times I spent extended periods of time with P’s family… long enough periods (excuse the pun) of time that they must have assumed I menstruated at some point. I fretted, what if they found out that I was? Would I be banished from the kitchen? Would I not be allowed to cook? Would it disgust them if I touched something that someone else would eat during this “taboo” time. I probably spent a bit too much time thinking about it, because nothing was ever said, and I never noticed P’s mom, aunt or female cousins separated out unless it was done in a way that was not very noticeable.

“If you really think about it, the taboo at one point probably made some sense,” P said, during our dinner conversation, “if you think about rural villages, especially a hundred or more years ago, it was difficult to have good hygiene in general, let alone at that specific time for women. Fresh water might be limited, material goods were limited, during that time of each month women probably were unclean because of the conditions they were surrounded by in addition to her own condition.”

The taboo unsurprisingly seems to be enforced much more in rural areas than in metropolitan areas. For example, one  development website states, “Menstrual taboos are deeply rooted in the culture of some Nepali castes… During menstruation, some girls and women are not allowed to enter a kitchen, touch water, attend religious functions, and in extreme cases, are not allowed to drink cow milk, eat fruit or sleep in a bed.” My guess is that as time goes on this taboo in the general Nepali public will probably slowly start to become less widely adhered to, perhaps more like an “old wives tale.”

But even if the taboo in the cities is less strict, a few of my female friends have explained how it affected them in their own childhood households. Every family is different, and different castes have different variations as well, but one common story seems to be that of confinement during a young woman’s first menstruation cycle. The girl is not able to see any of her male relatives or the sun, instead she has to stay in her room with the door and windows closed and shaded. Many of her female friends and relatives will probably come to visit to keep her company, but she is not allowed to do any religious activity during her period of confinement. The length of time seems to vary, around 12 days, although I think P’s younger cousin only did it for 3 or 4 (J Phupu didn’t want her missing out on too much school). Sometimes the young girl might be dressed up in a sari to be portrayed as more “womanly” during  this time.

I also think that it is around this time when Newars have a more elaborate custom for young girls, called the “Bael  Byah” or “bael fruit marriage,” but I’ll talk about that another time.

Anyway, the conversation was interesting, so I wanted to share. Since menstruation taboos isn’t a topic talked about everyday, does anyone else out there have any stories?

Invited to the Wedding…

I’ve had marriage on my mind a lot lately, so every now and then you guys will have to bare with me until P and I finally tie the knot (save the date, we are hoping for summer 2011, after 8+ years of being a couple). Anyway, today was AS’s actual birthday and at a “little” impromptu gathering (of 14 people) I got into a discussion about marriage ceremonies that reminded me of something.

A Nepali friend (NF) asked, “Have you seen 3  Idiots?” (a relatively new Bollywood movie staring Aamir Khan that everyone is talking about).

Me: “No, we can’t find an online copy with English subtitles” :(

NF: “Too bad, it’s great!There was this one scene in it, I swear it reminded me of my undergrad years!”

Me: “Really, what happened?”

NF: “So at the university [where the movie takes place] sometimes the campus is rented out for weddings. One day the student-characters are really hungry and decide to crash a wedding for food. However the wedding is for their professor’s daughter (of course, you know how Hindi movies are) and the professor humorously discovers the student-characters. [hilarity supposedly ensues]. This was like the time when I was an undergrad… and my buddies and I were sooo hungry, and we noticed a wedding taking place on campus, so we went inside to eat the food and our professor caught us!”

Me: “Does this happen a lot?”

N: “Honestly I don’t think it is that uncommon for someone to randomly show up, particularly as the guest of someone else, and I think in Nepal people are more lax about this than even in India. One time my dad and I were going to a wedding (of someone we knew). We got to what we thought was the venue, went inside, ate dinner then met with the bride and groom and gifted them an envelope of rupees. When we left the party my dad told me that he later realized that we actually went to the wrong party, and he didn’t know the couple! But no one said a word! Even though they knew my dad [he's a public figure] and the family must have realized that we didn’t know them!” But it seemingly wasn’t a big deal.

I’ve also kind of seen this myself…

For example (for numbers), over the summer P and I went to our friends R and S’s wedding and at each reception (of which their were 3-4 official ones) there were several hundred people. I think at R’s reception about 650 people came. 650! Unimaginable in American terms! And that was just one reception of at least 3!

After R and S’s epic affair, P’s neighbor was also married, and (for example, random people) I went to the groom’s reception with P’s family. I wasn’t invited, I was just along for the ride, and it was very obvious that the family didn’t know me since I was the only non-Nepali in the crowd, but I was still welcome to dinner, and rounds of soda or wine (or whiskey) if it suited my fancy.

Now that P and I are starting to get (slightly) more serious about planning stuff for our own nuptials, numbers (in an American wedding) are a critical thing. For each person you invite you need to think about food and potentially drinks. Looking at reception sites the $ multiplies exponentially. I really can’t understand why food becomes so crazy expensive once you say it is for a wedding rather than a regular dinner! So in an American wedding you really need to think about who is invited, because the cost differential might be huge. Not to mention seating arrangements, and other annal retentive stuff like that!

Anyway, like I said, this reminds me of when my cousins were married. Their family lives in Pennsylvania, the same state where P’s brother U went to college. Each time we went to a wedding U was around and we would inevitably stop in for a visit while in the area. U would usually ask me the awkward question about being invited to my cousins’ weddings… “I’ve never seen a ‘white’ wedding before… when are we going?” and I’d have to make excuses. Most American weddings aren’t like Nepali weddings– you can’t just bring along people unannounced. It’s just not kosher. Both times I had to talk my way out of a last minute invite, I mean, my extended family hadn’t ever even met U, why would they invite him to their wedding? U had a hard time understanding. In Nepal he could just go, what was the big deal?

I’m not sure how our wedding will look some day. I won’t be surprised if there will be last minute people who might try to jump in on the action, and we will eventually have to deal with that as the situation arises. I think my family would have a difficult time imagining a wedding with 1200 guests (the number of people who attended N’s elder brother’s wedding in Nepal)– not to mention P and I wouldn’t be able to pay for them all, while some of our Nepali guests might not understand why they can’t bring their cousin who is visiting for the weekend when the wedding is going on.

Ah, the joys of intercultural marriage.