Presentation: “Down the Rabbit Hole: Research Adventures in Malawi and Goa”
“Down the Rabbit Hole: Research Adventures in Malawi and Goa,” was presented March 7, 2019, at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Alto Porvorim, Goa, India.
From the program:
When a talking rabbit runs by you, you have a few options: attribute the experience to an overactive imagination; or, suppose it is a vision meant for someone else; or, follow it down the rabbit hole. When fiction writer Debra Nicholson unexpectedly encounters a relatively unknown story about Goans in Malawi, Africa, she does not hesitate; she jumps.
Since 2016, her pursuit of this story has taken her from Bowling Green, Ohio, USA, to Canada, to London, to Malawi, and to Goa, and, in March of this year, she will continue on to Portugal. While in Goa she would love to meet Malawian and other East African Goans.
Pleasing Pollinators
I’ve got a new blog post, “Pleasing Pollinators,” up at the Jaipur Literature Festival/Boulder blog. Its title image is a beautiful photograph by photographer Kathy Heisinger, my sister.
Enjoy!
Thanks for reading!
What are Women Doing in India?
September 7, 2016
What are women doing in India?
If you were to fully depend on Western media for information, you’d think they were all busy being sexually harassed or sex-trafficked or raped.
Or at least being forced into arranged marriages.
You might think they are busy being uneducated, unhealthy, and not only unmodern but positively uncivilized, bearing ten children, wearing ancient-style saris, and balancing huge bundles of sticks or baskets of cow dung patties on their heads.
Or, you might think they are all busy trying to be glamorous movie stars in the world-wide cinematic phenomenon of Bollywood.
Since India is half a world away, and since most of us have not traveled to India, we most likely get these ideas about the lives of Indian women from the mainstream media.
A quick survey of articles published about Indian women in The New York Times reveals that, in 2016, articles on safety (4), sexual purity (4), reproductive issues (2), activism (1), and one in-depth article about women’s struggle to work in a rural village, have been the sum total of our insider’s view of the lives of women in India from this prestigious publication.
And none on female Bollywood stars.
You have to go to People magazine for that. Since the beginning of the year, as many as three articles feature Priyanka Chopra—likely because she’s acted in an American television series, Quantico.
Not only has there been a dearth of Western news articles about Indian women, those that do inform us of their lives focus on their “exotic” differences.
You’d think that all women in India think about and worry about is whether or not they are safe, sexually pure, reproducing (or not), or taking action to change what the West might perceive as backward cultural mores.
But, of course on all counts you would be only partly right.
Because Indian women, like all women everywhere, are busy leading individual, complicated lives balancing education, family, work, leisure, health, and spiritual practices, while dealing, as do all women everywhere, with a world that at best minimizes who they are and what they do, and at the worst, views them as expendable if they don’t fulfill certain prescribed roles.
When I was in India for 5 ½ months, I observed women who appeared to be living without basic necessities, such as shelter or food, particularly noticeable in urban areas. I observed rural women working in their homes and fields without modern conveniences.
But that’s not the whole story of women in India.
Not all women in India are cooking over cow dung fires and scrubbing their families’ clothes in a river, the stereotypical image almost everyone has of them.
During my travels, I had the privilege of meeting and volunteering with young women, in college or recently graduated.
A young enthusiastic volunteer at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
I also met a lawyer, a professor, a retired professor, a doctor, a journalist, a language instructor, a dance instructor, a bureaucrat, an artist, a few in the service sector, a few in the hospitality industry, Catholic nuns, and nurses-in-training.
At a conference at a women’s college in Delhi.
I rode the Delhi Metro in the “women only” car with many women of different ages and modes of dress (traditional and Western) who were likely riding to or from work while staring at their smartphones.
I went to a few malls where
A bride.
women were shopping with friends or with their partners.
I explored numerous notable sites all over the country and observed many women being tourists with their families or friends, apparently intrigued, as I was, by the rich, impressive history of their country.
In a mosque garden near Aurangabad.
Women in India are raising children, teaching, fighting for justice and equality, advocating for sexual, gender, and human rights, creating, volunteering, governing, learning, working, worshipping, and caregiving.
My hostess, the owner of my bed & breakfast in Jaipur.
There is not “one” representative Indian women.
My dance instructor.
But you don’t often hear about women who don’t fit the stereotype.
When I was living in India for nearly six months, I noticed this gap. I noticed that the voices and lives of women who didn’t fit the stereotype were missing in various Western media reports, when women in India were reported on at all.
I became concerned about how Indian women might be perceived back home, when I could clearly see that there was much more to understand.
For half a year, I traveled all over the India; I visited more tourist sites than most people, including Indians, ever will. But in retrospect I realize I only saw the surface of the culture. I saw the side of India that is, in some ways, exploited by the tourist trade, the side that we find different, even exotic, and therefore are encouraged to appreciate as more “interesting.”
If I were to go back to India, and I will, someday, I would like to talk to women, especially women who don’t fit the stereotype.
Some of the questions I’d ask would be: Tell me about your childhood. What were the turning points in your life? How do you feel about your life as a woman in India? What are your hopes and dreams? What do you worry about? What do you like to do for fun? What do you think about politics? Religion? Women’s issues? Family relationships? Work? Education? Where do you see yourself in five years? In ten? In old age? What do you think about the West and Western influences on your culture? If you think things are changing in your country, what do you think about those changes? How are you balancing the pressure for change with the pressure of tradition? What aspects of your culture are you following and what aspects are you working against? What are the most important aspects about India you would like the world to know?
I might even want to speak to women who do fit the stereotype, because, of course, all people are more than their stereotypes.
An elderly rural woman trying to secretly smoke a beedi at the Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur.
It’s not my job to speak for the women of India. They are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. I think of my desire to hear their stories, and perhaps to share them with a larger audience, as a way of opening up the conversation, since obviously we can’t depend on the media to do it for us.
Why is it so important to understand, you may ask?
It’s not because India is the world’s largest democracy. Nor is it because India is a rising economic power. It’s not even because India is our best friend against China. It’s because women’s voices matter. All women’s voices. And the more we try to get to know those who may initially seem different from us, the more we appreciate similarities and differences, and the more we are able to develop a circle of mutual respect that includes all of us and our many cultures. This can only do good things for our world.
As for women in India: What are they doing? They are busy. Busy negotiating the challenges of a complex world.
Let’s invite them to sit down with us for a few minutes and talk.
Surprised by India
I have been invited to be a blogger for Teamwork Arts, an entertainment company that produces the Jaipur Literature Festival as well as many other arts events, bringing India to the world, and the world to India. Here’s my first post, “Surprised by India:”
http://teamworkarts.com/surprised-by-india/
Thanks for reading!
Official Blogger for the Jaipur Literature Festival @ Boulder
I’ve been invited to blog for the Jaipur Literature Festival @ Boulder. You can find my blog posts about LGBT protections, “The Rainbow Parade,” and Her Majesty the Royal Queen Mother of Bhutan at https://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/boulder/blog/
Stay tuned for more!
The Other Nicholson in India
At first it was a curiosity: The sightseeing entry in the Lonely Planet guidebook, “Nicholson Cemetery,” in Delhi. All through my five-and-a-half months in India, I kept this in the back of my mind as a place I wanted to visit before returning home.
My surname appearing in India! It was a compelling coincidence.
Finally, the weekend before leaving, I braved Delhi’s intense pre-monsoon May heat and humidity to venture into Old Delhi to tour the (Mughal) Red Fort, and, just outside its Kashmiri Gate, the Nicholson Cemetery.
The tuk tuk driver maneuvered through chaotic traffic from the nearby Metro station and dropped me off at the cemetery gate. There it was, my surname, in bold, though battered, letters: NICHOLSON CHRISTIAN CEMETERY.
The Nicholson Christian Cemetery Gate
I walked through the gate, not knowing what to expect. But a cemetery is a cemetery, a place of rest for the dead, a garden paradise, right?
By then, I knew that the other Nicholson in India, Brigadier General John Nicholson, was buried somewhere in the cemetery. But I had no idea how to find his grave, and so I walked forward, past the sign where the rules were posted (ooops, just as I am writing this blog post and reading the rules do I notice there is no photography allowed except with permission).
The rules. No photography?
Beyond the sign were the cemetery paths leading past the graves.
Cemetery path.
This was unlike any cemetery I had ever seen.
The dusty dirt paths radiated heat. The grave stones were cockeyed and covered in dead or dying vines and grasses.
Graves of the British.
This was a place where you could really contemplate your mortality, in contrast to the pretty, picture-postcard-like cemeteries with which I was familiar.
This was a place where I would not want to be at night. In this place, the ghosts seemed to be more alive than dead.
As I slowly walked through the cemetery, already discouraged at the prospect of finding the grave of John Nicholson in this decrepit garden, I saw a man in the distance. Up until this point, I thought I was alone with the ghosts.
I did not want to be any closer to anyone in this abandoned cemetery. So I turned back to leave, disappointed that I hadn’t found what I came looking for.
Then, near the gate, I saw a woman in traditional sari dress and two small children. And a clothesline. And a small sort-of stone cabin and a water pump.
On-site caretakers. Living in the cemetery. Oh dear.
If you look closely, you can see a clothesline to the right.
What a star-crossed job position: Taking care of the bones of Christian British colonial oppressors.
Just in front of their living quarters, I discovered signs directing me to the fenced-in grave of John Nicholson.
The grave itself was covered with dried grasses, making it impossible to read the inscription. I suppose I could have asked the caretaker to clean it off for me, for the full effect. But I didn’t dare.
Brigadier General John Nicholson’s grave.
A few minutes later, I left the cemetery. But my questions persisted. Who was Brigadier General John Nicholson? And why was this cemetery named after him?
And more importantly: Are we related?
***
What was it about John Nicholson, of the British East India Company, that sparked the creation of a cemetery in his name, a Delhi road, a monument in Pakistan and another one originally in Delhi now removed to his school in Ireland, a ballad, several biographies (here, here, here, here, and here) , a theatrical play (p. 97), a mention in Kipling’s KIM (p. 45 in 2005 Dover Thrift edition), and a Punjabi cult (see note 23) lasting well into the 1980s, the Nikal Seyns? Even now, almost two hundred years after his birth, Nicholson’s life inspires admiring blogs (here and here).
Born in Northern Ireland, in 1822, John Nicholson was the eldest of six children by a Quaker physician and his Ulster wife. Unfortunately, he became fatherless at the age of nine. His career options were few, and so he signed up at 16 to serve in the British East India Company, the original multinational corporation (which was operating in India with its own army), and was sent to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1839. He was a commanding presence, at about six foot four inches, sporting a long, dark, bushy beard. He never married.
Nicholson was not particularly well known early in his career. He fought in the Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842), two Anglo-Sikh wars (1845 and 1848), and was appointed District Commissioner for the North West Frontier, which is now along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Various legends grew up around his fierce, brutal, but supposedly fairhanded administration such that he gained the respect of those he ruled.
But it wasn’t until the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, or what is now frequently called India’s First War of Independence, that John Nicholson gained fame.
The British East India Company maintained control of India with very few British, filling out their military requirements with a large proportion of sepoys, or Indian soldiers. In May, 1857, in several different locations in Northern India, the sepoys revolted, and eventually routed the British from Delhi.
In August, Nicholson swooped down from the North West Frontier with a few men and met the ousted British forces on the Delhi Ridge. There, he planned the storming of Delhi in order to retake the city.
On September 14, 1857, he led the charge, and when the forces were flailing at a crucial moment, he pushed forward to the front line to cheer them on, waving his sword, and was summarily shot in the back. He died of his wounds nine days later, at the age of 34, having heard just before his death that the British were successful. Delhi was taken. Nicholson was buried near where he fell.
India’s First War of Independence changed the course of history in India. The inhabitants of Delhi (and in the other locations) were ruthlessly massacred by the British. Twenty months later, the British prevailed over the uprising. The East India Company was dissolved, and the British Raj was born. The British essentially became administrators for the Empire in India, rather than “saviors” of the race. And the stage was set for the nature of India’s complete independence ninety years later, in 1947.
John Nicholson became a hero in death. He became the symbol of all the British aspired to be: a brilliant tactician, brave, honorable, fearless, and above all, sacrificial for the cause. Hence, the legendary status he gained posthumously. He was the hero who was held up for young boys to emulate by following in his footsteps to serve the Empire.
These days, however, British colonial abuses in India are not so well admired. Indeed, John Nicholson has not escaped re-examination. William Dalrymple, a Scottish historian of India, calls him an “imperial psychopath,” (The Last Mughal, 284) for all his brutal exploits in the North West Frontier. And Michael Silvestri, in his book, India and Ireland: Nationalism, Empire and Memory (2009), questions the construction of Nicholson as not only a British hero but an Irish one. To encourage more poor, second-class citizen military recruits, no doubt.
As for me, I’m simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by a person of such repute in India sharing my last name. Of course, his racist and imperialist attitudes were the product of his time, and his career was prescribed by his nationality, class, and fatherless childhood.
Nevertheless, I’m relieved that, according to the family genealogist, there is very little chance Brigadier General John Nicholson and I are even distantly related.
Still, I think his ghost haunts me.
Shit Tales
August 1, 2016
OMG: Squat toilets?
A man urinating in public outside and just to the right of that enclosed toilet building.
A women’s bathroom where every single one of the eight or so Western toilet seats were smeared with piles of feces.
Descending from the cloudy sunrise viewpoint on Tiger Hill in Darjeeling, I observe several men urinating in public alongside of the road (no hiding behind trees) while hundreds of pedestrians walk past them back to their vehicles.
A public toilet in Old Delhi that merely consisted of a wall of urinals with no outside enclosure.
Indian train tracks: the longest toilet in the world. Train toilets really do drop all waste directly onto the tracks.
A tour group member reports one morning that an entire family squatted together to defecate out in the open..
Seen from an elevated Delhi Metro train: a store window filled with Western-style toilets for sale.
There’s a toilet museum in Delhi????
Toilets in India are a frequent topic of conversation for Western tourists, from the introduction of squat toilets to the unbelievably small rolls of toilet paper in hotel bathrooms to the cleanliness, or lack thereof, of available Western and squat toilet bathrooms. Not to mention the rather shocking observation of some Indians urinating or defecating in public spaces. Ewww.
I’ve found, though, that the situations I encountered while in India where I was most shocked, or when I had the strongest reactions, are the places about which I need to question, think, research, and write. There’s a knee-jerk tendency in everyone—myself included—to judge behaviors that are different and therefore difficult to understand. So today’s blog post takes on one of the most socially disturbing of topics: shitting.
The first thing you might be faced with is the prevalence of the squat toilet. It’s definitely a surprise to walk into a public bathroom facility and discover this is the only option. You can find a video here on how to use a squat toilet, but let me just say that it’s a lot more complicated than suggested in the video. First, you have to ask someone to hold your purse, or if no one is available, you have to secure it over your shoulder or around your neck; take off your sunglasses and put them into the purse as well as your cell phone; roll up your pant legs; and, tuck your toilet paper roll inside your bra so that it is readily available. Then, you have to use your flabby uninitiated thighs to squat and balance yourself over the hole, pulling your pants away from the stream while watching out for your shoes! Toilet paper usage in this position is a challenge. Using a squat toilet while on a moving train presents additional challenges, although there is a hand bar with which to steady yourself. The first time I successfully used a squat toilet was, afterward, a fist-bumping event. Still, I never quite got used to it.
One would tend to believe that the Western toilet is superior to the squat toilet, especially in view of the idea that the latter tend to be found in developing countries and so therefore easily considered more “primitive.” But there are surprising reasons to suggest that squat toilets actually promote more successful pooping. One is recent research promoting the idea that squatting is more in line with what our bodies need to do to evacuate. A 2003 study comparing the relative ease between sitting and squatting demonstrated that squatting is easier and more effective for defecation, because, while squatting, the bowel aligns directly downward toward the direction of elimination, whereas the sitting position produces a curvature in the bowel which requires more of an effort to poop. Clearly, squatting is the way to go.
Another reason squat toilets are possibly more desirable is that they have the potential to be more sanitary. What woman would not tell you of the efforts required to either cover a toilet seat with layers of paper or hover over the toilet bowl in order to avoid touching the germy surface with her bottom? Bathrooms with squat toilets may have their problems with cleanliness but they do not involve the transfer of bottom-bacteria.
I’m not suggesting that all Western toilets the world over should be changed over to squat toilets. I’m just saying that we Westerners should be careful to assert toilet superiority.
Not only are our Western toilets not the best for pooping, our traditional bathrooms are inefficiently designed. The bathroom developed rather haphazardly over time, and hasn’t changed much since about 1910. The main wasteful culprit is the mixing of graywater (from sink and shower or tub) with blackwater (toilets), sending it all, gallons and gallons, through sewer pipes to wastewater treatment plants. That vast infrastructure needed to support current Western ways of body waste disposal require mammoth water purification plants to clean waste from dirty water and reintroduce it into the waterways.
Why, when in the West know that our toilets are not the best for our bodies, our bathroom plumbing is not the most efficient to deal with waste, and our waterways are still compromised by the 772 cities in the US who still use “combined sewers,” which “collect rainwater runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe,” and are allowed to spew out untreated waste into waterways during incidents of heavy rain, for example, do we promote the relatively backward Western method of body waste treatment technologies?
Considering that the World Bank loaned India $1.5 billion to assist the Indian government in promoting toilet usage in the country, it must be the case that Western commodes and Western plumbing are considered the normative and desirable practice (I won’t get into the politics of international lending practices to ostensibly fight poverty here). This loan money is being joined to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) campaign to make India clean by 2019; in this case, to educate those with outdoor defecation habits about sanitation and propriety as well as to provide toilets.
So far, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has not had much success with the toilet program; rural people are resistant to the technology. I don’t know why some Indians prefer open-air elimination. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert (here, here, here, and here) on the political, financial, ethnic, racial, class, caste, gender, language, social or cultural implications of India’s differing expressions of body waste elimination (not to mention colonial/post-colonial implications). I was amazed to learn, though, that there are more than 1,000 words for shit in India, and most, no doubt, taboo. Already this is a challenging linguistic divide, when you are talking about sanitation education. It’s an extremely complex issue.
But I ask you: Who cleans the toilets in your home? Who cleans toilets in highway rest stops, airports, government buildings, schools, universities, small businesses and large ones? Think about it. Who LOVES cleaning bathrooms? Someone else, usually from the lower classes, usually from the traditional caretaking gender, takes care of the room where you leave your body waste. If there’s nobody else to clean up your poop, and you avoid the issue by pooping in a field, why would you care about using a porcelain throne? No fuss, no muss. I would be hesitant to judge some rural Indians for continuing the convenient practice of open defecation without meaningful incentives.
Why, in a country with different cultural practices as well as uneven water supplies (due to geography and drought), would Western toilets, Western plumbing, and Western water treatment systems be the goal?
When I was in India the first time, in 2014, I had the idea that developing countries actually provide opportunities to adapt newer, better, technologies, rather than trying to build on possibly antiquated infrastructures, or importing outdated Western practices…or any Western practices. They could be models of the future, I thought. Of course, I was being naïve…
And that’s just plain shitty.
Further reading:
A one-man campaign to promote cultural change and a New Delhi toilet museum.
Toilet change is political in the U.S., too.
Indian trains were designed by the British, including drop-to-tracks toilet waste. Here’s what’s happening to correct that.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has gotten in on the action, with a “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge,” funding research projects for the development of sustainable toilet solutions in India, and elsewhere. I’m not sure how this intersects with the World Bank loan program to India. Here are some designs from the 2014 Reinvent the Toilet Fair held in New Delhi.
There’s such a thing as a World Toilet Organization, a UN World Toilet Day, and the organization’s work in India.
And, just for fun, here are a couple of books with pictures of toilets around the world.
Thanks, as always, for reading my blog! Next blog post: Brigadier General John Nicholson.
Trashed!
July 7, 2016
Trashed!
It’s time to talk trash. That is to say, India’s so-called “trash problem.”
After I returned from my first trip to India in late 2014, a friend asked me what I would change about India if I could change one thing. I thought about it a bit, and then I said, “The trash problem.” Coming from the mostly litter-free U.S., our recycling programs, and curbside waste pickup, I cherished the community and national value of clean public spaces.
Trash is something you notice right away when you begin to go around India. Piles and piles of trash, everywhere, along the city streets and roads, in vacant lots, and in villages, with people, cows, goats, pigs, and, no doubt, rats, going through those piles, looking for something worth eating, re-using, or re-selling. It was disconcerting, to say the least. Shocking.
It’s a picture often painted of India: Those poor people resorting to ragpicking to earn a living. Kind of Dickensian, really, and oh-so-very backward. Your bleeding liberal heart breaks into a thousand little first-world do-gooder pieces.
During my second trip to India, which lasted nearly six months, I had a slightly different reaction to trash. When I arrived in Delhi, the garbage collectors were on strike for not having been paid for three months. (There were garbage collectors? There are landfills? Yes, and yes.) That made the trash problem even more onerous, but the second time around, I was not as shocked.
Part of the time I was there, though, I was traveling with a couple of tour groups, and the topic of trash came up with my fellow travelers who were in India for the first time. Then, I found myself defending India. I’d say: It’s a developing country; it has many, many issues to be dealt with simultaneously. Or: India is a relatively young country; in the U.S., a longer-lived democracy, the “Do Not Litter” campaign began as recently as in my lifetime. Or, I’d say: We just don’t understand; maybe they have different values. At least the trash is not going to waste (re: trashpickers)! Or: You can’t expect India and the U.S. (the West) to have the same values!
Eventually, there was the gradual uncomfortable realization that “India’s trash problem” is a very visible, very troubling sign of not just India’s problem, but a world-wide garbage problem. It was a daily reminder to me that unconscionable amounts of waste are generated every day. While India’s trash lies out on the street, my trash is conveniently picked up every week, and I don’t have to think about where it goes and how my discard practices are adding up.
Much of the world’s trash, though hidden from view in municipal landfills usually outside city limits, is waste from the capitalist consumer culture of the West.
Consider these municipal waste (not industrial waste) statistics:
- In 2012, the World Bank predicted the world would generate 2.6 TRILLION pounds of garbage; 44% by OECD (developed countries); 5% by South Asia. A large proportion of the world’s trash is organic waste (1).
- Annually, Americans generate 254 million tons of garbage. (2)
- A country of 1.2 billion people, India annually generates 147 million tons (133,760 metric tonnes) of garbage. (3)
- In 2012, per capita daily household waste in India’s cities ranged from about ½ – 2 pounds of household waste. (4)
- U.S. daily per capita household waste is about 4.4 pounds. (5)
Not only does the West generate more trash than India, its wasteful practices are being exported, literally and figuratively. One obvious trash item is snack food packaging, like Lay’s Potato Chips bags, an item, or one like it, you can buy almost anywhere in India. (6) Just on a whim, I did a little research on when PepsiCo/Frito-Lay began exporting snack items like potato chips to India. According to PepsiCo’s website, Lay’s has been an “indispensable part of India’s snacking culture since its launch in 1995.” (7) It now has a 60% market share in India’s potato chip market, (8), with its four layers of polymer-material-based non-biodegradable packaging. (9)
For probably hundreds of years, India has had a vibrant street food culture, where snack food is made while you wait at food stalls, with very little production waste. Now, although street food is still widely available, there is a concerted effort by Western snack food corporations to break into the “emerging market” of India. Not surprisingly, although there are thousands (if not millions) of small and large outdoor traditional fresh food markets in India serving as sites for food sales, the Western grocery store model is making inroads into the culture (I remember being amazed when I discovered a grocery store). EuroMonitor International (an independent provider of strategic market research) reports that 90% of all packaged food in India is sold in grocery stores, and are thus key to growth in packaged food sales. (10) Where in India the snack food industry packages snacks in even smaller packages, due to the average consumer’s lower purchasing power, an even greater threat of packaging waste is created. (11)
Then, there are the other exporters of Western waste habits: McDonald’s, Starbucks, and other Western fast food restaurants now opening in India. (12)
Not only is the West exporting habits of non-biodegradable food packaging waste accumulation, it’s also shipping their traditional waste and e-waste to the shores of India and those of other developing countries, those least able to properly process and dispose of it. (13)
Can we now be quite so judgmental of India’s trash problem?
But wait! Why doesn’t India have “Do Not Litter” campaign (as I remember its name from my childhood) like we do in the U.S.? Why don’t they catch up to Western standards of clean public spaces? I’m so glad you asked that question.
It turns out the our cherished “Keep America Beautiful” campaign has a little trash problem and some culpability on its bloody hands. In the article entitled, “The Origins of Anti-Litter Campaigns,” Bradford Plumer credits Heather Rogers’ book, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (2006), with exposing the origins of our national focus on clean public spaces. In 1953, some state government regulators were about to put the kabash on so much one-use packaging. In response to the danger, two corporations, American Can Company (producer of aluminum cans) and Owens-Illinois Glass Company (producer of glass bottles) teamed up with other corporations to launch the “Keep America Beautiful (KAB)” campaign, which effectively redirected the burden and responsibility for litter from the producers of one-use products to the consumers of one-use products. Then, in the 1970s, this same KAB group lobbied for recycling as a means to fight the U.S. trash problem, once again redirecting the responsibility of trash generation to consumers, rather than producers. (14) It’s your fault, and mine, that we produce 4.4 pounds of waste daily, not the corporations who make it difficult, if not impossible, to do otherwise.
As for India and making the country beautiful: In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a national initiative called, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or “Clean India Mission,” where he exhorted the citizens to clean up trash and clean up India, drawing upon one of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams for India to inspire the people as a way to celebrate his 150th birth anniversary in 2019. (15)
Sound familiar? Of course, I am not arguing that trash should not be picked up. But that Western attitude from the corporate-designed Keep America Beautiful campaign, that attitude that says personal responsibility trumps corporate responsibility, has been exported, too. What about the systemic problems of trash generation: More and more products that we just have to have, desires created by ad blitzing; daily, newer model products that make the old models obsolete; one-use products, …and so on. Where does the real problem lie?
In the meantime, the Western media continues to focus its reporting energies on those Indian ragpickers, those truly unfortunate people who must dig through garbage for a living. (16) Or the media focuses on just how difficult it is for India to deal with its trash problem in a tsk-tsk sort-of way, reporting on how Indians themselves are ashamed, with electrifying photos. (17) In fact, it was just that sort of article that I read while in India that spurred this blog post, from the National Geographic. On April 26, 2016, an article ran, entitled, “What It’s Like to Live in the World’s Most Polluted City,” by Melody Rowell. It was a photo essay with photographs by Matthieu Paley, who had gone to Delhi for five days to take photos of Delhi’s pollution problem (18). Aside from an assignment of only five days (an expert, then?), and the usual focus on gasp-inducing photos (they are not like us!!!!!!), the article ended with the Paley’s lament that he could not find a trash can anywhere he went in Delhi.
In other news: The local landfill in my Northwest Ohio county is filling up.
And the City Council of my home town has debated for a couple of months about the problem of unsightly, overflowing trash cans: Where should they be required to be located so as not to offend neighbors and passersby?
Clearly, more trash cans are not going to solve the problem of trash.
Notes:
(3) http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/3-million-truckloads-daily-indias-real-trash-problem-68539
(4) http://swmindia.blogspot.com/2012/01/municipal-solid-waste-msw-generation-in.html
6) Full disclosure: I partook of many packaged snack products in India, especially on the two-month train tour, when the only food available on the trains was likely not produced in sanitary conditions. I’m not proud of this. The subject of food sanitation is a subject for another day.
(7) http://www.pepsicoindia.co.in/brands/lays.html
(9) https://www.polymersolutions.com/blog/the-science-behind-packaging-the-chip-challenge-flavors/
(10) http://www.euromonitor.com/food-trends-in-india-what-makes-the-indian-market-so-different-/report
(11) http://fmtmagazine.in/fmtnews/its-snack-time-in-india/
(12) http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/a-growing-taste-for-u-s-fast-food-in-india/?_r=0
(13) http://whenonearth.net/20-countries-that-are-used-as-dumping-grounds-for-your-waste/
(14) http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns
(15) http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/government_tr_rec/swachh-bharat-abhiyan-2/
(16) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/opinion/scavengers-are-indias-real-recyclers.html
(18) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160425-new-delhi-most-polluted-city-matthieu-paley/
More reading (a very, very short list compiled from my internet searches):
“Gone to Waste: How India is Drowning in Garbage.” http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/india-s-cities-are-faced-with-a-severe-waste-management-crisis/story-vk1Qs9PJT8l1bPLCJKsOTP.html
“Garbage Everywhere.” http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/confessions-of-a-trash-tourist-india/373118/
“Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2012.“ https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09/documents/2012_msw_fs.pdf
“India Environment Portal.” http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/
“Is India a Global Trash Can? http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Is-India-a-global-trash-can/articleshow/5851954.cms
And: Did you know there is an academic specialization called, “Discard Studies?” You can find more here: https://discardstudies.com
Thank you, as always, for reading!
Stay tuned for my next post: Toilets
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
June 27, 2016
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
A vendor walked with me through the lane of bazaar stalls as I left Ajanta Caves near Aurangabad, India, in May, one of my last sightseeing trips before returning to the U.S. Several men had surrounded me as I entered the market, conveniently placed between the shuttle bus stop to and from the caves, and the parking lot. I had pleasantly declined to enter any stalls or to purchase anything that was offered me, almost thrust on me—shawls, rock crystals, small idols, cheap colorful baubles, and more. “No. No. No thank you,” I had said to everyone. But this vendor had become even more persistent, following me as I ate my packaged ice cream cone in the 100+ degree heat, my one concession to the market. “No,” I said again.
In a bitter voice, he said to me: “Don’t worry, be happy.”
It might have been the four or more hours I’d spent in the abominable heat touring the majestic, art-filled Ajanta Caves; it might have been the constant pressure to have to repeat something negative so many times; it might have been five months’ worth of hassling at that point—but with that bitter, or sarcastic, “Don’t worry, be happy,” I lost it.
I turned toward the vendor, stretched out my right arm and pushed my hand toward his face in a “talk-to-the-hand” gesture.
“What? What?” he stuttered.
I turned away without saying anything and stalked out of the market with my ice cream cone in hand, my sunglasses hiding my eyes, my straw hat betraying my foreignness, and my darkened, grim expression no doubt scaring all the other vendors away. No one spoke to me or approached me again.
“Take me out of here,” I said to my hired driver as I climbed into the back seat of the car. I was steaming mad.
I was angry, but why was I so angry?
And what did he mean with his comment, “Don’t worry, be happy,” anyway?
The vendor didn’t look old enough to know of Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 hit, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” He might have known of The Overtones’ cover of 2013. Or, perhaps he was referring to a song of the same title from the Tamil action film, Nimirnthu Nil, from 2014, which although I can’t translate, seems to suggest that, like the other renditions, you should fight calamity with determined, even silly, happiness. Maybe the vendor meant to reassure me, although it is hard to imagine how this might have applied to me, even remotely, at that particular moment.
Or maybe he was referring to the slogan “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” coined by the Indian spiritual mystic, Meher Baba, in the mid-20th century, which was the original inspiration for Bobby McFerrin’s composition. Meher Baba lived from 1894-1969 and claimed he was the Avatar, God in human form. He chose not to speak for nearly 45 years, from 1925 until his death. One of the many spiritual activities he practiced included the three-year “New Life” phase, where he and a few followers gave up all their possessions and traveled incognito all over India, begging food for their survival, endeavoring to accept anything that they experienced with equanimity.* Maybe there was a deeper cultural reference from the vendor that I was not aware of at the time. Perhaps he was suggesting that by saying “No” to him, and every other vendor that day, I must be content to lead a life of deprivation.
But that’s unlikely.
Of course, I have no idea what the vendor meant, and, obviously, I cut off any further communication with him. I’ve only dimly understood, after some time and thought, what precipitated MY reaction.
When he said, “Don’t worry, be happy,” I think I lost it because I really was tired of saying “No.” I am in the habit of trying to please people; I would rather say yes than no. After having lived in India for five months, I was well aware of the economic disparities between the poor and me. I was already painfully aware of my limitations to do anything about these disparities. I couldn’t buy something from all the vendors in India! To me, when the vendor said, “Don’t worry, be happy,” I heard in his voice (whether he meant it or not) blame toward me for being unwilling to part with my money on something so inexpensive, an amount that meant so little to my pocketbook and meant so much more to his.
But I was also tired of being asked to buy stuff. I was tired of being singled out as the white person with the money to make their day successful, maybe making the difference between dinner on the table or not. That was a heavy load to carry as I walked through any given market. I was tired of being seen in only one dimension, as if money solved all my problems and worries, because what more can I possibly want in my obviously happy life? As if all those things money can buy didn’t create a whole new set of problems? On the other hand, it’s a luxury to think the way I was thinking. How can I possibly understand living on the edge of, or in, abject poverty? The deprivations, degradation, the daily fight to maintain any kind of personal integrity?
Or maybe it is not like that at all. Maybe the degradation happens through having too much.
Clearly, the gap of understanding between the haves and the have-nots is very, very wide…or, possibly, very, very narrow.
Also: I was tired of the vendors’ marketing techniques. I wanted them to be nice; I wanted them to follow some rules if they wanted me to spend my money. As a sometime college composition teacher, I could make some suggestions to them about their attempts to persuade: Don’t pester. Don’t put potential customers on a guilt trip. Don’t point out the relative imbalance of earning power. Don’t make false claims about merchandise. Don’t be angry at Westerners if they bargain hard because that’s the game you yourselves have set up. Also: I wanted to be left alone to shop, with a salesperson available to help only if I needed it. In other words, I wanted them to be like vendors in the U.S. I’m not proud of this. I’m currently reading a book entitled, “Holy War: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations,” by Nigel Cliff (HarperCollins, 2011), and he describes da Gama’s 1498 first encounter with Indian bazaars on the Malabar Coast as a mile long inland (217). Bazaars have been going on for a long time, and, of course, in other locations and for hundreds of years before the 15th century. My bazaar squeamishness reveals a lack of sophistication, really, about the wider ways of the world.
I was tired, also, of seeing markets like this where people were trying to make a living selling trinkets, where these items were being sold as something I might actually want to buy. It was insulting. But in my travels around India, I frequently saw balloon vendors in city centers, in parks, along beaches, selling enormous helium-filled tie-dye-colored latex balloons, and I could not imagine what kind of life that must be, to try to earn a living selling balloons on the street. As I reflect about my experience at the Ajanta Caves market, it occurs to me that selling balloons, or other worthless trinkets, might be insulting to the vendors as well. I don’t know; I might be projecting my values on their situation. I mean, Indian vendors are probably selling relatively worthless trinkets because tourists like me are buying them.
After trying to describe these thoughts to a friend recently, she told me the story of one of her grandsons who recently quit a retail job in the U.S. because he found it soul-sucking to try to encourage potential customers to buy more than, or higher quality than, they needed or were able to afford. Here in the U.S., marketing and selling might take a different form, but it’s marketing and selling, nevertheless.
And that got me asking the question: Why is there so much stuff in the world, and why are so many people trying to sell it? What would it look like if people weren’t selling so much and others weren’t spending so much time and money buying? What other societal foundations might be considered valuable and essential? What kind of culture, what kind of civilization would that be?
Call me a Pollyanna, but could that possibly usher in something like a utopia hoped for by Meher Baba (and other spiritual masters), where the mantra, “Don’t worry, be happy,” might actually mean something?
*For more on Meher Baba, see www.meherbabainformation.org
~~~~~~~~
Thanks, as always, for following my journey! Stay tuned for my next blog post: “Trashed.”
Dancing My Dance
June 8, 2016
Dancing My Dance
Bollywood dance pose.
I judged myself rather harshly for not catching on to Bollywood dance during the last few weeks in India. I had signed up for two classes at the Delhi Dance Academy (www.delhidanceacademy.com) with the fabulous instructor, Aditi. The classes were late in the afternoon (preferable for my schedule), and girls and women of all ages participated, although I was, let’s say, one of the more advanced in age. Two hours of dance three times a week challenged my physical stamina right away, while the warmth in the studios (despite air conditioning attempting to combat Delhi’s 110+ degree heat) made me wilt within minutes of starting class. But I couldn’t blame these factors on my disappointing learning curve. The fact remained: I could not remember the simple choreography of the routines.
It’s not like the moves are that difficult. Bollywood dance is a dance form combining traditional Indian dance with many other styles like jazz, contemporary, hip hop, and anything else the choreographers want to throw in. Hindi films may have several dance performances; the dancers, in a large group, but dancing individually, are arranged in rows facing front, sort-of like Broadway musical dance numbers. Think the ending of Slum Dog Millionaire, and you’ll get a very general idea of what’s involved. I could do the moves, usually (except when moving from lying on the floor to an upright standing position, say). So my failure to pick up the sequence of dance steps was very discouraging, and a little embarrassing.
My problem in learning choreography is not a new problem, however. During the time of my relatively short dance hobby (4 ½ years is short in dance years), I’ve primarily danced ballroom, Latin, Argentine tango, and some club dances. These are partner dances, and while, as the follower, I always want to look my best, to dance with feeling and correct technique, I rely heavily on the dance partner to think ahead to the next dance sequence; my job is to read his cues and execute the moves he is inviting me to do. In terms of learning individual dance moves, especially early on, I was a rather “quick study.” It wasn’t until I chose to participate in showcase performances (adult ballroom dance recitals) and more advanced courses that the real trouble set in: I could not easily learn and remember step sequences and choreography. I spent hours and hours rehearsing my part in my showcase routines, and even then, I wasn’t confident of the moves in the glare of the spotlight. I was told repeatedly by my professional dance instructor/performance partner that he would cover for me in the event of any catastrophic memory lapse—but it was difficult to trust 100 percent in my own ability or his.
A few years back, I participated in a local theater company’s production of the Wizard of Oz. I was in the chorus, and I could not learn the choreography of a key dance sequence. I had to ask my good friend, who happens to be blind, who was also in the chorus, to help me learn the dance.
And, years and years ago, when I was a high school cheerleader, I could not be counted on to remember cheer routines. A memorable photo in one of my yearbooks shows me as the only Varsity cheerleader out of step. Age cannot be blamed for that early inability!
So maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised at my apparent failure to memorize Bollywood dance routines.
As I pondered this inadequacy, it occurred to me that I needn’t be so hard on myself. After all, I haven’t had much practice in dancing alone. In reality, during much of my life, I’ve been dancing to the choreography of others. I’ve been doing what has been expected of me in my various roles as daughter, wife, mother, then divorced single mother, graduate student, one-time composition instructor, churchgoer, good citizen, and so on.
Maybe the problem hasn’t been the dancing! Maybe the problem has been trying to dance to someone else’s idea (or culture’s idea) (or my idea of culture’s expectations) of how I should “move!”
It’s true I’ve had a lot of “phases,” or “enthusiasms” in my life. On the surface, it would look like I had been choosing my activities, or choreographing my own life dance. I think, though, that my choices were circumscribed by what I thought would be the appropriate parameters for whatever the more important role I was enacting at the time. So, I had the (unsuccessful) nursing school phase, supportive wife phase, the jewelry-making phase, the volunteer phase, the Victorian house phase, the local-graduate-school-program phase, the hopeful fiction-writer phase, the knitting phase, the applying-for-then-opting-out-of-a-PhD-program phase, preserving fruits and vegetables phase, the famous radio show phase, the ballroom dancing phase, and many more minor phases. I don’t regret these phases; well, I don’t regret most of them. The point is that I chose them in response to how they fit around the primary role at the time: daughter, wife, mother, single mother, etc. I didn’t necessarily choose them because I could “follow” the “choreography” of each phase particularly well.
Now I’m an empty nester. If you’ve followed my blog from the beginning, you might remember that part of my justification for going to India for nearly six months was because I was at a loss as to what to do next in my life after raising children for 25 years. Anything I imagined doing for the next 30 years seemed to pale in comparison to the meaning and importance of being a stay-at-home mother. I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on the trip to India; I didn’t expect all my life questions to be answered. But I hoped that something to look forward to, something to plan, and something to DO, was better than staring down my bleak, purposeless future.
In other words, I had no one to choreograph these next dance steps for me. There were no obvious “shoulds” to fall back on. It was a scary time. In the past, no matter how badly I danced to others’ choreography, at least I was dancing.
Here’s part of what the trip to India did for me. It helped me understand that the most important question for me at this juncture in my life is not about the “meaning” and “purpose” of my life. The most important question for me is how I’m going to live out the remaining years of my life. What is my own choreography for my own life going to look like? Well, I can’t plan out the next 30 years of my life; can you?
For now, though, it is enough to say that I came back from India loving India, loving to read, research, and write about this most amazing country, and sharing my thoughts and adventures with others. (One thing about all my phases: I am, and always have been, an enthusiastic participant.) This doesn’t mean I will stop Bollywood dance, or partner dancing, but it doesn’t mean I’ll continue, either.
So stay tuned. My life’s choreography is being created, step by step. I may not be very good at creating my own choreography…yet. But that’s okay.
I’m learning to dance my own dance.
(Look forward to my next blog post: Don’t Worry, Be Happy)
About Debra
A trip to India in November-December 2014 so completely stunned Debra Nicholson that she vowed to return as soon as possible. Following her nearly six months’ second trip to India, from December 2015-May 2016, which included a camel safari in the Thar Desert, volunteering at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a two-month train tour around the perimeter of the country, and Bollywood dance and Hindi classes in Delhi, she continues to post on her blog, The Laughing Camel, about her adventures.