"Not a Girl... Not Yet a Woman"

You could mine salt in my armpit hair, and I've only been here for three weeks. Feminism looks different here.

Get your own valid XHTML YouTube embed code

Two Critical Questions

"A Natural Language"

I spent about an hour and a half in a sort of language exchange lesson with Bhimaji today. Bhima is a phenomenal cook and a wonderfully sweet and sincere human being. We got a white board, and got to it. He had all kinds of questions about future and past tense, and in trying to explain, using English words he knew and Hindi words I know, I was more able to recognize how difficult my mother tongue is. I had all kinds of questions about passive and active moods in Hindi. You can say "to heal," in both a passive and an active sense. One would refer to a doctor "curing" a patient (the verb karna), the other would refer to a person simply "getting better," (the verb hauna). Active is intervention. Passive, he explained is like... natural.
-----
In the book entitled, "Practical Spirituality," a Q+A session with Marshal Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, NVC, he says, "I think it's a natural language. Do that which contributes to life."

NVC is a process of learning to communicate with each other and to deal with difficult situations by focusing on two critical questions:
1) What is alive in us?
2) What can we do to make life more wonderful?

According to Rosenberg, question number one relies on three levels of literacy:
1) Observations (what is or is not making life more wonderful for you right now- no evaluation or judgement)
2) Feelings (what is really alive in you right now?)
3) Needs (the cause of your feelings, and the basis for a request for something to make life more wonderful)

The process by which Rosenberg explains how to develop these literacies sounds a lot like Ayurveda:
"Ayurveda places much emphasis on understanding the ego and its inherent biases, so that our judgements remain balanced and our actions are for the greater good, which is ultimately our own good as well. Dissolving the ego (evaluation) cures all psychological diseases and many physical diseases as well." (my parenthetical) -From Yoga and Ayurveda, by David Frawley.
-----

"Shabash, larki!" he said. I felt my breath skip, and I consciously exhaled. I am not a girl. A few asanas later, he says, again, "well done, girl." This time, I say, with a smile on my face, but sternness in my voice, "Larki nehi hun, mei mehila hun." He laughs, and asks, knowingly, if I am married. My answer does not surprise him, and he says again, "then you are larki (girl)." Exhale again. I am remembering Marshal Rosenberg's writing about NVC, and I ask Raviji, "so what if I were never to get married?" He answers then, that I would become a bardi larki, a "big girl." I think of all of my experiences, and all of the stories I've been told and which I live out daily that deal with coming-of-age, womanhood, and maturity. I have "become" a woman at least three times. My conversation with Raviji continued in this playful but clearly meaningful way. He conceded to referring to me as a young woman, or a lady, but in English only. There is no Hindi equivalent, he told me; if I were to call a lady my age or older who is not married by the Hindi word for woman, she would be angry with me. In the story told in Hindi, a girl becomes a woman through the process of marriage only. (more feminist musings coming in another post)

This interaction occurred only a few hours after a rather heated exchange between another yoga student and Yogiji, during which I quietly and continuously adjusted my own breathing, and relaxed my facial muscles as I felt the tension physically. I reflected on their terse exchange relating to NVC and considering the fact that they were arguing (for lack of a better word) in English, which is a second or third language for the both of them. There were two cultures, two language roots, and two perspectives clashing, though they are all implicated in each other. I wondered how much could be attributed to the language inequality for the both of them (having had both of their minds shaped in two different cultures and two different languages, but communicating in another), and how much of their dispute was value-based (moral stance).(Not to mention that their disagreement was about time and privacy- both of which are social constructs that vary widely across culture and are framed differently in each language.) More than that, however, I was curious how each of them could use knowledge of NVC and understanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language shapes thoughts), in addition to a meditative approach of simply listening, dropping ego-attachment to stories, results etc., and a calm mind to make their perspectives better understood and actually come to a solution, which they weren't truly able to do.

I thought of the yogic precepts of honesty (satya), and non-harming (asteya). How can we be honest with one another in a situation when that possibly means pain for another? In my first class on Ayurveda, Dr. Amrita told me that one of the basic principles of Ayurveda is that one should never have pain. This made me a bit apprehensive. Recognizing that I come from a western background with the notion of "no-pain-no-gain" deeply imbedded in my history, but also having a sense of balance, I probed her further. She conceded that, yes, in some circumstances, a treatment may be unpleasant, uncomfortable, and even painful in order to achieve a higher state of painlessness or vitality. Most of our first discussion was grounded in the physical realm, but she did mention that another basic principle in Ayurveda is taking the psychology (mentality, emotionality etc.) of the person into account with EQUAL weight as their physical body. You get no oil from the olive without crushing it, or more appropriately for India; you get no butter without churning the milk. Sometimes you have to endure a bit of friction, a bit of pain, in order to come to a better place.

The question is: how much is necessary? I think NVC is a good foundation upon which to build conversations that push our cultural, lingual, and storied (not a typo; storied, as in we create stories and live them out as reality, but they may or may not be universal and so are prone to create what we know as culture shock) buttons. We need to keep the breath steady, the focus simple (2 critical questions, 3 basic literacies), and our energy present with one another. Another basic principle in Ayurveda is that all of nature, including ourselves, is composed of the elements; fire, earth, air, space, and water. Imbalances in our elemental composition may be expressed both physically and emotionally or mentally. In the heated exchange between Yogiji and the other student, the student's overabundant fire was being expressed verbally, which may be healthier for her than for it to manifest as indigestion, for example. However, the fire that was expressed was not done so in a nonviolent way, and perhaps put more stress on the community, or on the relationship between the two of them. The same can be said for the way Yogiji responded in the situation. So while one manifestation of elemental imbalance may be initially healthier for the individual, it may not be the best for the community or for relationships, which would ultimately end up creating more imbalance in all of the individuals in the community. I would like to put some of my eggs in the NVC basket as a possible middle ground.

Often since I've been here, I wonder what in the world are all of these yogis and gurujis are doing, just sitting around in their temples, on their cushions, in trance states, and concerned more with purusa (or spirit), as opposed to really contributing to this, our natural world or prakrti. (and to be fair, many are helping local people with family issues, and many are teaching western foreigners like me...)

B.K.S. Iyengar (yogi superstar) says in his book, Light on Life, "the demonstration of one's spiritual achievement lies in none other than how one walks among and interacts with one's fellow human beings," and while I take a bit of a small and semantic issue with the word "achievement," the statement sounds comfortingly similar to Ronsenberg's sentiment of, "I trust a spirituality that leads people to go forward and transform the world, that doesn't just sit there with this beautiful image of radiating energy. I want to see that energy reflected in the person's actions as they go out and make things happen. It's something you do, a practical spirituality."


So, just to tie it all together: spirit is both natural (hauna), and active (karna).

On the Side of a Train in Jalandhar

On the side of a wall of what I expect is a restaurant: Fish Fried Breakfast
On the side of a bus, indicating the company name: New Tantra
The name of the toll when crossing the Punjab/Himachal border: Shiva toll

Oh, India.

Updates:

-I own three salwaar kameez suits.
-I can now use present, present and past continuous, and completed past tenses in Hindi, albeit the last two with a bit of difficulty and usually my verb agrees with the subject when it should agree with the object, and vice versa, but people understand for the most part. Mostly I just ask questions. More often than not, I do not understand the answer.
-My vocabulary is extremely limited, but that is changing quickly.
-My last day in Mussoorie, after my classes, and after lunch, I shared a taxi with two other gents from the language school who were heading to Rishikesh They agreed to drop me off at the Dehradun train station where I would board an overnight train to Jalandhar. In typical Indian fashion, two taxis showed up for the job; one of which was requested, the other drove all the way from Rishikesh but had been told not to come. He was sent back.
-On my overnight train, my ask, in my best Hindi, what time the train will reach Jalandhar, so that I can set my phone alarm to wake me up 15 minutes prior. I am told three different times, each about an hour apart. I wake up every hour, and find someone awake to ask where Jalandhar is: kay aahgay ya kay peechay? ahead or behind?
-I get off the train at 5:45 am. My connecting train is at 1pm. Chai time.
-An excerpt from journal:
"Literally just spent7 hours at the train station in Jalandhar, the last two of which were spent with this Indian woman, her daughter, and her daughter's friend. At first, it was very nice, I tried practicing my Hindi, they asked me questions, and were very friendly. Then they suggested (or requested, rather) that I come with them. I said no, my train is coming, I need to say (or some approximation thereof in Hindi; I made sure to use "nahee" a bunch so as to reinforce my stance of "no"). They continued to insist, and I held my ground. Then they dropped it, fairly abruptly, and said it was time for lunch. They offered me some parantha, and I declined. Again, they insisted, and what with me not knowing the customs, I did not want to be rude, and accepted one. At this point, the mother was on the phone and I could understand enough of what she was saying to know she was telling someone about me. This freaked me out a bit, and it occurred to me that if I ate their food, I might be obligated to go with them. I stopped eating, said I was full. Seemingly suddenly, the whole scene of myself, and these women is a spectacle at the train station. There is a group of Indians surrounding me, and I can't understand anything. This makes me nervous and I begin to pick at my nails (a nervous habit I've kicked previously several times, but it reoccurs in situations like this) and I begin to bleed around my cuticle (not uncommon for me). Now, ALL of the women are distressed, wagging their fingers at me and repeating the phrase, "Achhaa nahee hay," "not good," over and over. I nod, and sit on my hands. Now, I not only want my train to arrive, I want them to leave me alone, and I am annoyed (as I am with anyone who addresses my nervous habit, particularly in a language I don't understand). Then train is late, and I am internally freaking out. I stand up, strap on my pack, and step a few feet away from the group, all of whom now know that I am an American student studying health, who is going to Pathankott and speaks very little Hindi. I remove myself until the rain comes, listening intently to the loudspeaker for my train number and any updates I can understand. I turn, and say "namaste," to the group when the train (finally) arrives. Now for those who are unfamiliar with India train protocol, every passenger's name is posted with their seat assignment on a paper outside of the car. My name is not on the list. I get on anyway, figuring that it's got to stop at Pathankott, and it's definitely better than the train station. Well, one point for me, because the first person the train that I ask about Pathankott, tells me that it does indeed stop there, and he is, in fact, getting off at that stop. No one asks for my ticket. So while I still haven't figured out how Indians know when their stop is coming up, other than just being familiar with the routes or looking out the window for a sign that may or may not be there indicating the station stop, I do know that I will not miss my stop at Pathankott: Chakki Bank."
It is at this point that I am settled on my top bunk and studying my Hindi notes, when I realize that my phone has died. I wonder how I will contact Shivam when I arrrive in Bhagsu, because he is supposed to take me to take me to my accommodations at the yoga school. I decide to deal with it later, and trust that it will be just fine. Meanwhile, I overhear the fellow on the bunk across from mine on his cell phone, speaking in English, and telling his friend about a white girl studying Hindi on the train. I laugh because he is using the pronouns he and she interchangeably. I do not take offense. I put my notes away and we begin talking, in Hindi. He asks me if I feel bold, traveling alone. Bold? Thoree thoree, a little bit, I tell him. Mostly, I just want a warm place to sleep tonight.
During my three hour and $30USD taxi trip, the very sweet driver let me borrow his phone to call Shivam. My phone turned on just long enough for me to jot down his number, Shivam answered, and agreed to meet me in town in an hour. A very steep hike up the stairs on the side of the mountain later, I am laying on the floor of the yoga hall, which is decked out with pictures of Shivam's Babaji, full of burning incense, and Sunil is playing the harmonious and chanting. The harmonioum is definitely in my top 5 favorite instruments. I am informed that dinner is ready, and I retrieve my daal (lentils), chawal (rice), and chapati (like pita, but better), and in the absence of utensils, I am in heaven, and I sleep like a baby.

A more structured and reflective post coming soon.

Om Namah Shivaya

" एशिया के बहुत अलग है "

"Asia is very different," she tells me.

Every day at 3pm, I meet with Roni. Roni is an Indian woman who was trained at the language school, but works independently as a conversation partner to help students practice their Hindi. She is very cool.

Yesterday, in my "ali-baba pants," tee shirt, and sweatshirt (zipped up half way), Roni told me she had to tell me something अंग्रेज़ी में (in english). Apparently, I was "getting a lot of eyes from bad men." She proceeded to tell me a number of stories of Western women in horrible situations. "Ladies aren't friends with men," she spelled it out for me, and if a woman "invites problems" (referring specifically to the way Western women dress), then the men "can't control themselves."

(me, 2008, "ali-baba pants")

I've heard this argument before. It's a strange mixture of blaming the victim and debasing the perpetrator. If a man has no choice but to behave amorally when faced with temptation then the woman should have known not to put herself in the role of temptation. But there's something else going on here. Roni was not coming from a blame-the-victim mentality, she was not, explicitly or in her subtext, arguing that the women "deserved," or "asked for it." She displayed a definite sense of pity for women who expected men to have self-control. As if western women expect too much from men, and it's too bad that in some cases, we learn the hard way that modesty is best.

I watch the women in Mussoorie. Nearly all of the adult women dress traditionally either in saris or salwar kameez. Many younger ladies and girls wear western कपड़े (clothing), although many teenagers also wear salwaar kameez. The foreign tourists wear a funny conglomeration of the two, and I am honestly a bit wary of cultural appropriation- though I'm not sure how that functions when I am embedded both in the context of this culture, but retain a mostly western mindset. Clearly I am in a gray area.

(salwar kameez)

I see a lady, about my age, riding on the back of a motorbike. She is wearing jeans and straddles the bike. Taking a physical manifestation of metaphor, this is a much more active position- facing forward, and exposing the front of her body to the world. This position says, "I am here, I have opinions, and I can execute my own decisions." Women in saris and even salwaar kameez (even though it's basically a pant suit), do not straddle. They sit side-saddle. This position is passive, it says, "I am along for the ride."

But there are also women like Roni, who dress in traditional, and more modest clothing, but recognize that that, too, is a kind of power. Deciding to cover my shoulders, my chest, my ankles, is the knowledge that, "this is my body, and I can exert some degree of self-protection by dressing in this way. Men, they are fickle and cannot control themselves, and so, I control myself."

When walking the paths with Roni, we pass by a few men and she adjusts her scarf around her neck and shoulders so that it hangs just so over her chest. She does this when a certain air of, "yeah, i know you like it, but you can't have it," and we keep walking.

And even with my trepidation of presenting myself as a tourist who just thought "those dress-things are SO PRETTY!" and wearing tie-dye and brightly colored kameezes, which would only serve to attract more attention to myself instead of the intended effect of avoiding "getting a lot of eyes from bad men," Roni insisted that I find myself a couple of suits. And despite my holding tightly onto the belief that men are not so lowly or weak, and I can dress in whatever way I feel comfortable and appropriate, I also feel less comfortable and certainly less appropriate in my typical fashion. I am the girl whose every outfit involves a tank-top, regardless of whether. That, however, will not fly here. (Plus... those dress-things really बहुत सुंदर हैं, are very pretty.)

"Asia is very different."

Spiderwebs

Here is a shout out to a good frined, an incredible person, and an inspiring eduventurer! Jessie Yancey-Seigel, spearheader on project Eduventurist, blogs on important and exciting revolutions bubbling up in various parts of the world surrounding educational reform. She also writes profiles on people who have done interesting things on their own educational adventures. She has honored me by including me in the project.

Check out her blog!

http://eduventurist.org/

घूमना-ing Around

A mini post on language.

I went on a hike yesterday with another language school student who is also from the states. It was a rather steep path that we were taking to another village named Kulti, about 10 kilometers away.

Well this other student, let's call him George, he has been at the language school for about three weeks and he is what you would call an overzealous student. The typical Landour Language school student takes about four classes each day. George takes 6. I felt very privileged to be on this hike with him; to be able to pick his brain on the Hindi language, and his experiences thus far.

A gem from our conversation:

To ask, "where does this path/road go?" the direct translation from Hindi would be, "this path tends to usually reach where?"
-The word order aside, I like this comparison in particular because it highlights a story we tell ourselves in the West. On the English side of things, there is an assumption within the question itself that this path always goes to one place- that if I am to follow this road, I WILL, undoubtedly get to one particular destination. The question is, in and of itself, destination-oriented.
My sister told me a story once from a conversation she had with a South African man close to the village in which she works. He told her that it upsets him when Europeans or Westerners come to his village and ask him, "How do I get to_____?" because, he said, it's the wrong question. One should ask, "Where is _____?" and then, based upon where they are and the context in which they find themselves, determine how they would like to get there. Asking, "How do I get to____?" assumes, first of all, there there is only one way to get there, and secondly, ignores the context of the individual.
The Hindi question, which uses the habitual tense, understands that this path may or may not get you to where you want to go; that it may have a tendency to reach to a particular village, but depending on various conditions, may not actually deliver you there. Furthermore, it almost seems to give the path a personality, a recognition of the ability for everything in nature to respond with subjectivity to its surroundings. This path is conscious- to what extent is clearly up for debate, but it seems that Hindi gives the path the benefit of the doubt, unlike English.

The best translation for hiking in Hindi is "to wander." (घूमना, "ghoomna")

All of this became particularly poignant on our return hike back from the village, as the path definitely does NOT always wind in the same direction; we were most certainly wandering through the river, and bushwacking up the hills on hands and knees. I have 10 leech bites to prove it.


A poem from Antonio Machado:

Caminante, son tus huelas,
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.
-translated-
Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only wakes upon the sea.

When Your Native Tongue is Their Second Language... And They Have Better Grammar Than You Do

A brief introduction to my thoughts on language.


Language is the "map" we have created over millennia to make sense of our surrounding world. It is the raw experience, disciplined. Just as our environment is constantly changing, our language evolves and adapts to continue to guide us. This is evident to any 10th grader reading Hamlet, or anyone who remembers when "neato!" was an acceptable affirmation.

Every individual, and every culture (from the super localized, to the global) creates a story (using language) to make meaning of our experiences. We have hundreds of stories; some we use in certain situations, and others in other situations; some we use all of the time, to the point that we aren't even aware of them being stories, and others we only use occasionally. Our individual lives, our social values, spiritual beliefs, and healing modalities cannot be separated from each other because they comprise that whole Self-identifying story. Think of identity as a fabric woven in a thread of your particular language. The thread being composed, in turn of each smaller thread of beliefs, values, history, etc. twisted around each other.

When we learn a new language (and I mean, really learn a language- not just from a book, but in its own context and from it's native speakers), we not only enter into the stories told in that language, we also engage in a process or writing a new story. We bring our own values, beliefs, fears, histories= STORIES- into the picture: a "mezcla," if you will (I don't know the Hindi word, yet). In his book, Narrative Medicine, Lewis Mehl-Madrona discusses the implications of 20th century quantum physicist, David Bohm's theory of "implicate order," and states,

"each individual consciousness unfolds the universe for itself... any high level of consciousness is a social process... [that depends] on language, which is social. The word, which is outside of the individual, evokes the meaning that is inside each person."

(Hindi HW, Day 1)

(Hindi Textbook, and flashcards, Day 2)

"Some of our maps have left out the roads to more desirable places than those we may have imagined." -from Narrative Medicine

So to even think that I could set up these discrete boundaries on this blog to separate my posts on "language," from my posts on, "community," from my posts on "healing," is glaring at me straight in my eyes like the monkeys on the street threatening and menacing. But more than that it's a challenge. Academia, the Western epistemology (or story) thrives on and demands categorized information and despises overlap- at least traditionally. Interdisciplinary is coming up and coming into it's own- slowly, but steadily.

Mehl-Madrona writes, "We will never be able to experience what ancient healing practices were really like. We are all stuck in our modernity with our prejudices, our romanticism about the past, our preferences about what we would like to believe and our skepticism and doubt that we have learned from Western society." There is something to be said for purity, as it were- keeping the traditions in tact- fencing off "untouched" communities, and keeping sacred what has always been, but we also live in this reality of globalization, and unescapable connectivity (whether it is "good," or "bad," is almost irrelevant, and the answer will be different based upon the perspective you take,) and perhaps a "mezcla" is precisely was is needed in our global community.

So then what am I to make of my experiences here? I was told once, by a professor from Orissa, India, who teaches dance and literature at my college, "When you've spent a week in India, you can write a book about it; when you've spent a month there, you can write an article; and after a year, you can say nothing."

I will do my best to continually reinforce the neural network connecting English and Hindi, somatic and intellectual knowledge, and my individual experiences to my broader community. Thank you, dhnyavaad and hugs to all of you who support me!