(UPDATED)Part 2 of Operation Travel Around for 3 Weeks: Completed

So as I mentioned in a previous post, we spent the better part of the four days before Christmas in Dhaka, Bangladesh for the 2nd wedding ceremony of two dear friends, Mithi and Drew.

Besides having the extreme pleasure of sharing this ceremony with old friends* this wedding was particularly neat because it was so international! The wedding party was a combination of Bangladeshi, Malay, and British.... when you included the guests there was representation from all over Asia including India, China and Singapore. We were able to add the US to the guest roster. The number of languages being spoken around us at any given time was both overwhelming and wonderful.

As such, there was a lot of combining of various cultural traditions and perceptions … and a lot of care was taken by Mithi's mother and father, in particular, to make everyone from all these different places feel comfortable. And as we saw and spoke with the hosts and the guests about how they saw these particular proceedings, it was clear that everyone there was was so happy for the new couple that they were predisposed to be pleased! :)

As out of towners we spent a lot of time with the other out of towner guests - particularly the Malaysian contingent, which was a real treat because so much of our conversations were about comparing Bangladesh to Malaysia and India. The Malaysians were pretty surprised by the poor quality of the roads, the "dust", and the more obvious signs of poverty ... while we, having just come from Kolkata, were disposed to think Dhaka was a cleaner, less poverty-stricken version of a big Indian city. In fact, besides the traffic (which was miserable), we really liked Dhaka a lot.

Wall to wall traffic at a stand-still... a pretty typical sight

Another typical sight - entrepreneurs taking advantage of a captive audience

But by far the icing on the cake of this trip was the fact that we were adopted by the wedding party as part of the family. We had been a little nervous that because of all the family and wedding events that we might not have had time to spend in close company with Mithi and Drew --- but we just felt so overwhelmingly honored that instead we had the opportunity to spend so much intimate time with both the bride and groom AND their immediate families as well.

It seems like pretty obvious logic, but I always seem to be surprised and then delighted by the joys of visiting a family in a new country. Yes, this was a wedding so all the various hosts were anxious to please … but, being included into a family circle – one that has different cultural norms than your own – is, I believe, the best way to navigate the preliminary ups and downs of any cultural transition … some helpers to teach you the ropes, as it were. Mithi's family (extended family played hosts as well) were always quick with kind words and offers to fill our already full plates.** Also, special mention needs to be made of Drew's British family, who - while not event hosts - were exceptionally inviting and welcoming of us into their crew. We all laughed over funny idiomatic expressions***, politics, and the ups and downs of living abroad - amongst other things... oh, yes ... and puns... lots and lots of puns.

So what all did we do?

The first night we were invited to Mithi's father's sister's house for a family dinner - a picture of which I posted earlier. WHAT A SPREAD! Little did we realize that it heralded more meals like that to come!

Next night was the Holud, a more intimate celebration with just family (there were only about 100 people there) where members of the couple’s families blessed the couple by dabbing their faces with turmeric paste and feeding them sweet curd. Most people would put a little paste on their forehead right between their eyes and then wipe off any excess … Allen went straight for Mithi’s nose (I love Mithi's sister's reaction in this photo)

The next day was free and so most of the out of towners took the opportunity to go shopping. Happily I ran into Mithi and Drew in the store and was able to sneak away and spend the day with them and Drew’s family in the botanical gardens and then at their hotel.

A stroll through the botanical gardens was like walking through a forest

By the third day it was time for the wedding reception, but before that, we spent the afternoon entertaining Drew with discussions of academia, juggling, 3-D printers, and metal-food composits - while Mithi spent the afternoon getting dolled up.

The reception was held in the Cantonment at a hall that was spectacularly decorated.

Mithi looked GORGEOUS in her grandmother's wedding sari - how amazingly cool is that! I wish I had a better picture of her all dressed but - to be honest - I didn't have the heart to stick another camera in their face ... as I'm sure you can imagine, they were the stars of the show!!!

We enjoyed ourselves immensely talking with other guests, getting our (over full) of food and sweets, and using the spectacular decorations to take silly Whiskerino pictures for Allen...

Mithi and Drew - a million bazillion thanks for inviting us to your celebration and for making us feel so warmly welcome! We came with well wishes for you and the expectations of being pleased by whatever we had the chance to experience ... and we came away with so many new friends, so many wonderful memories, and so many invitations to visit Malaysia, Singapore, and England. We really don't have the proper words to express how happily we spent our time with you and how we wish you nothing but happiness on all your future endeavors. And Drew, I've been asked especially by Allen to mention that he would be happy to throw bits of plastic at you any time you wish!

Mubarak Ho, Mithi and Drew!!!
________________________________________________

*Nikki and Mithi met during Nikki's year of study abroad in London back in 2004.
** We ate more meat - particularly in biryanis - in the those four days than we have probably in the last six months. (giggle) Never have we been so well fed and so full!
*** Our newest favorite expression is PANTS, which is a kiddy expression for something being bad... correct usage would be something like "Working on the weekend is absolute pants!" Note that "pants" in British means "underwear" in American. So it's like saying, "the Bristol bus system is Underwear!" (which means useless, rubbish, etc.)

(Belated) Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from India

Sadly we spent most of Christmas Day in the Kolkata airport .... though happily because we were on route to pick my parents up in Delhi to begin Part 2 of Operation Travel Around for 3 Weeks (Part 1 here, Part 2 here).

But to keep us in the spirit of the season we're sharing these two videos of Indian Christmas. They were first posted on one of our favorite "Westerners-in-India" blogs Our Delhi Struggle.
Hope they give you a good little chuckle...





We're sad we can't be home for the holidays this year -- although we hear traveling has been a nightmare because of all the snow (and now attempted terrorist attacks) -- but please know you are all missed and we're thinking about you!!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Dhaka is totally winning...

OK - we've only spent a total of 24 hours in Dhaka, but its up their on our list of nice cities ... mostly because of the AMAZINGLY warm greeting we've received so far.

The parents of our friends Mithi and Andrew (whose wedding we're here to celebrate) have really pulled out all the stops ... from arranging for someone to meet us at the airport, to coordinating hotel for us and all the other guests coming from all over the world (UK, US/India, Malaysia, etc), and welcoming us to their home ... literally, look at this spread we had for dinner last night:

:)
yummy!
Allen was so excited to eat beef last night ... we're really not in India...

Part 1 of Operation Travel Around for 3 weeks: Completed

Our first stop on our whirlwind adventure over the next three weeks was Kolkata - which is a city that is pretty hard to sum up because it is full of so many opposite extremes. We took a long lay-over (2 full days) in Kolkata on our way to Dhaka primarily because there were several tabla maker shops Allen was interested in seeing.... our impressions are probably best described through a pros-cons list:

Very visible signs of public sanitation: PRO
Amazing what simply adding garbage cans on street corners will do. Also there really weren't any cows wandering around the city (only in the suburbs). The open sewers were still sort of there, but because there were long and wide sidewalks everywhere, you really hardly noticed it.

Blurred line between public and private: CON The sidewalks, as I said, were a plus and easily managed foot traffic --- as long as there weren't whole communities taking up residence on them. We've seen families living on the streets of large cities before -- maybe it was the presence of the sidewalks, I don't know, but here it had the feeling of being inappropriate ... or maybe it was just the sheer numbers of people living, eating, bathing on the streets that made it different this time.

Lots of Pretty Old buildings: PRO
The Victoria Memorial (pictured) is just one of the many examples of some amazing architecture. The city has little jewels scattered here and there - it is worth the look up every once in a while.

Lots of Pretty Parks: PRO
Hold-overs from when this was the British capital of India - but there was a very clear attempt and creating lots and lots of green space in this city

... that are over-run with goats: CON
I should mention that actually most of the parks were almost impossible to get into and out of because they were fenced in, in many cases with barbed wire ... the parks overrun with goats (and garbage) were the ones most like open (public) fields ... and accordingly they were treated as such.

Like any big city, traffic was a nightmare: CON
But not only for the reasons you might expect ...firstly, streets can have upwards of three different names (governments have changed many of the names for there own ends). Secondly, many of the major arteries were made one way streets ... OK ... but they change direction at 2pm... but the trolleys that are on the same roads do NOT change direction ... try keeping all that straight.

Public Transportation: PRO
I mentioned the trolleys but they also have buses, a metro, and a fixed-route auto-rickshaw system. Yellow ambassador taxis were definitely the most identifiable form of transportation, but the existence of the metro, in particular, was an out-of-towner's dream.

Existence of tana rickshaws: CON
I personally find riding in cycle rickshaws pretty hard sometimes (particularly when I need to go uphill) ... but imagine a rickshaw without the cycle - this gentleman is just pulling you by foot (not to mention that he's counterbalancing your weight so you don't go flying backwards). Just seemed like a seriously bad idea given how much gas-driven traffic there was in this city.

Motorcycle passengers were wearing helmets too: PRO
I even saw a family, father, son, mother, all wearing helmets on one motorcycle. Amazing!

Being accosted by begging children and grown men alike: SUPER-CON
Two memories that will be burned in my muscle memory for quite some time are literally pulling my clothes out of the fingers of small begging children and being touched by an adult man on the street. The heartache I felt at having to push a child away ... there aren't really words for it. Plus the embarrassment I felt at being touched -- I whirled around and shouted "Hey! @*%$ YOU!" --- and to have no one respond, and the perp just walk away as if I had just said a polite greeting. I want to believe that New York would be different (Allen disagrees) ... I want - no, need - to believe that in the United States if a woman confronted a man by shouting in his face, even if it was in a foreign language, someone in the surrounding crowd would at least have the response of looking surprised!

I'm still pretty jaded about these experiences if you can tell. Kolkata is probably the hardest place I've ever visited, period - let alone for India. You'll notice there are really no pictures - mostly because I was in shock all the time or was really uncomfortable about taking out my camera.

Was everything terrible? No, of course not, but it never is all terrible. This city was just so extreme that it was hard to get your bearings: you would find a little oasis, like Victoria Memorial or Park Street Cemetery --- which were relics of the Raj, mind you --- but once you stepped out onto the street again this city and its people were immediately back in your face.... begging, groping, washing, sleeping... Your 5th Ave and your Bronx were mixed up together on Park Street... it was hard to keep straight because many of the images you saw were troubling.

Is it better for these things to be hidden? Is that what they are in the US, just hidden? I'd like to think that we have better safety nets for families in trouble - but the truth is I just don't know. I don't think the US is perfect, but there is something so radically different about how people live on the streets here.

But maybe too this is just a part of the culture that I just haven't learned to wrap my head around: this difference between private space and public space. Americans (Westerners, if I can be so bold to presume) have a strong belief in protecting one's own and respecting other's privacy. We use sayings like TMI (too much information). We close our bedroom doors. We expect our children to want their own rooms and to eventually want their own homes --- and in some cases, this is a welcome relief to their parents so they can have their own space back. Yes, we're gossip hogs too: but we justify those tendencies by saying that celebrity's have given up their right to privacy by entering the public sphere.

One's own space... what does that mean, what can that mean in a country where multi-generational households are still the norm? But some things are private - breasts should be covered by duppatas .... and others are not... but minuscule blouses under your sari that shows your middrift is fine.

I don't really know... Kolkata really sort of messed with my head. I'm going through a moment of pretty extreme culture shock --- which is so unfortunate as we've got another two weeks of traveling to do.

There and back again...

So it slipped my mind to mention yesterday that we're leaving on a three week trip that is taking us all over the place ...

On Friday we're begin by taking a couple of days in Kolkata on our way to Dhaka, Bangladesh for the wedding of a dear friend of mine. After several days of wedding festivities we head back to Delhi to pick up my parents who bravely agreed to come visit us in India - even after reading all of my blog posts. We'll be visiting the highlights of Rajasthan in an almost perfect imitation of our honeymoon earlier this year: Udaipur, Jaipur, Agra, and then back to Delhi. Then home again to Lucknow, arriving just after Allen's second semester of Urdu classes start January 7th.

So it may be a while before another sizable post from us - but rest assured whenever it comes it will be a doozy!

How Language Shapes Our Cultural Norms

Students of linguistic anthropology would not be surprised by me claiming that language can shape our view of the world... but the impact of that process is hard to see when you're learning your first language because you have no basis for comparison.

I'll admit that when I learned the smattering of Spanish and French that I now have at my command, I didn't feel that a strong cultural clash was coming through my new found understanding ... most likely because those cultures, while different, were still Western and retained many similar underlying cultural principles.

Learning Hindi is like entering into a new and secret world.

First, you start off with an entirely new script and alphabet. Instead of your A, B, Cs you learn your Ka (क), Kha (ख), Ga's (ग) . Word order is entirely different, in your head if you translate literally you sound a bit like Yoda (Allen Ghar par hai = Allen home at is). But this isn't the stuff that shapes culture per say, just a sign of how two systems could develop differently. No, what I'm talking about starts popping up by Chapter 6 of "Teach Yourself Hindi"... these examples range from silly to more serious --- but hopefully we'll keep updating this list.

The infinite names for family relations
Following up from my recent wedding post ... not only do you have about a million names for your various family members, but they are all based on reference to the husband's family - because the wife has given up her family to join the family of her husband.

There is no word for boyfriend/girlfriend
Almost goes without saying in a culture of arranged marriages, but was still sort of surprising to learn. I've been told by several friends that "love marriages" as seen as synonymous with elopement and are distinctly frowned upon as being anti-social. Not hard to imagine given that it is not supposed you get to spend lots of time with your spouse (and hence really know them) until after you're married.

There is no word for "Please" b/c it is built into the language in different command forms or verb tenses/registers.
Again, not so terribly surprising if you've come across informal/formal "you" forms before, but what makes Hindi interesting is how many gradients of respect are available in the language. From Rupert Snell's "Teach Yourself Hindi":

tu - indicates great intimacy and is used in addressing a close loved one or a small child

tum - is informal and casual and is used with a person expecting no formality or deference - a friend, child or servant

ap - is relatively formal; it indicates the respect one shows towards equals (and above!) and is the natural choice in conversations with all people not falling into the previous categories

A good example of this distinction comes from a story one of our American friends told us. She was hosting a birthday party for her daughter and had invited all of the neighborhood children that she plays with. The mom was trying to get the children's attention for another game, but was using the ap form for her command and she couldn't understand why none of the kids would listen to her. Then one of the other mothers issued the same call for order in the tu command and all the children quited down ---- they weren't accostumed to being addressed in any way other than as tu.

Causative verb construction = Servant verb construction
This is pretty advanced grammer, so I don't know all the nuances of this construction - but there is a verb tense in Hindi that recognizes the presence of servants ... it is a very construction that says "I did this thing but through the actions of someone else". Like the difference between "I put out the fire (myself - implied)" and "I put out the fire by telling so-and-so to do it." It came up in Allen's class because they were watching a movie about a King - where all of his "actions" were done through some other agent.

This is just a work in progress ... hopefully we'll have some more neat language examples for you as we progress.

If you like it then you better put a bindi on it...

The title is a slight misnomer (but more on that later) ... we went to Banaras for a wedding last week and ended up staying to attend another one later that weekend.... The second wedding was a bit of a surprise, but we had always intended to spend some extra time in Banaras since Allen is planning to do his year of field work there -- I had never been before, so it was an opportunity for us to imagine ourselves living there (after all the time we've spent in Lucknow so far).

The Weddings
So I should preface all my remarks by first saying that I don't have the slightest clue what all is involved in a Hindu wedding --- I definitely have a better idea about some of the parts of the celebration, but by no means have a clear picture of all the proceedings.... thank you Wikipedia (click for article on Hindu wedding celebration). Essentially there are many different pujas involved in the wedding ceremony - mostly having to do with removing the daughter from her family and making that transition to her new family. The process can take several days - forcing the new couple to sometimes go without sleep for days ... sort of puts all the "stress" of my own wedding in perspective.

We attended the part of the ceremony that was the most public, meaning we picked up the groom, paraded him through town (literally, with a band and florescent lights on generators), took him to meet the bride at the shaadi-ghar (literally, wedding house), where they exchanged garlands of flowers, and everyone was served tons of amazing food. I'm sort of making light of the hours of parading and dancing and singing and laughing and cheering ... but I hope you get the idea from the following photos:

The happy groom on horseback

I didn't at first understand the need for the lights (or the generator attached to the lights) until we came across roads that were little more than gravel... they served as street-lights and I'm assuming were meant to prevent someone from breaking their neck while parading

What is a proper parade without dancing...

And what is proper dancing without a decent band

The happy couple, post garland exchange

Signs and symbols of marriage
I've been asking a lot about this in preparation for these wedding but have yet to get a definitive (authoritative) answer on the subject of what are the symbols of marriage in India. While our wedding bands have a lot of significance in the United States and the Western World in general - they have no meaning in India, where frequently both genders will be wearing multiple rings on each hand. While bindis (wore on the chakra between the eyes), nose rings, and bangles have been associated with marriage in the past, they are being adopted by the younger generation for fashion. I'm told the only real ways for Hindu women (because there are no signs for men) to mark they are married are to wear sindoor (red coloring in the part of her hair), silver toe rings on both her second toes, and a mangalsutra (a necklace of gold and black beads)

Dropping off the face of the planet

So, we haven't updated you on our comings and goings in a while - largely because I've been sick for almost 2 weeks straight ... but I'm feeling highly motivated this morning so hopefully I'll be able to churn out a couple of posts this morning