Weddings and marriage are a big part of life in the villages, and almost all marriages here are arranged.  Its not a we-picked-this-person-for-you-when-you-were-4 arranged, but it is still very much a family affair to find a partner for a young unmarried family member.

I have been asked many times if I will have a "love marriage" or if my friends and family had love marriages or arranged marriages, and I have to explain that in America, we just say "marriage" and that we don't use the term "love marriage" because there's nothing else (except for in immigrant families/communities).

I was asked about the marriage ceremony in the US, and when I got to the "you may kiss the bride" part, I got some interesting responses... first: "Is it their first time kissing?", because in an arranged marriage you may not have had any physical contact with your partner-to-be.  The second "Oh my... in front of all those people?" because public displays of affection are very rare in India and indicate some kind of moral deficiency.

They are also shocked when they find out that Dolly and I have both had serious girl/boyfriends before.  Here, you fall in love once, and that's it.  If you're lucky you get to marry the person.  They have a saying "In America you fall in love and then get married, in India, you get married and then fall in love."  If you have had a serious relationship and it didn't work out, you are considered tainted or faulty, especially if you are a woman;

They think that their way is better because our way so often ends in divorce.  They overlook that divorce is not an option in India, as women are economically and socially dependent on their husbands' families and their own families may not take them back, a vulnerable situation which can lead to domestic violence and abuse. 

There is also a gap between belief and practice, and this goes for all of the moralizing.  Many of the people who will say, "Indian rules about love are perfect" are having affairs, they say "drinking is bad" but then they go get plastered, they say that you shouldn't date, but are seeing someone.  This is probably true of all small-town conservative societies, and I'm looking forward to returning to a liberal big-city!

Dolly and I were invited to a wedding by Ajay, one of the JSS workers.  It was his brother's wedding, and in India the groom travel's to the where the bride lives, to go get her and take her home.  We were told this bride lived some distance away, and they were taking a JSS vehicle to bring the guests.

We spent the night on the JSS campus so we would be there when the jeep left early.  We piled into the vehicle, filling every seat.  Then we picked up someone else, jamming him into the back.  We made our way to the groom's house about 20 minutes away.

At the grooms house a crowd was gathered, and they fed us an early lunch.  Fireworks were being set off outside.  At this point it began to be clear that even more people wewre going to be packed into the jeep, and we were headed to a location 6 hours away, the amount of time it takes to drive from Boston to Philly.

My plan was to sleep in the vehicle, and it became clear that would be difficult due to lack of comfortable space.  Staying awake was not a great option either, as there were no English speakers aside from Dolly, and my Hindi is not much better than greetings and pleasantries, simple questions, and being able to say what I ate last night.

So, I told them I wasn't feeling well, and got dropped off at the nearest town and I took the bus back.  I felt bad, as everyone was very excited to be going and also genuinely worried about my health.  However, I would have felt worse jammed uncomfortably in a jeep for 12 hours.

Dolly went, and they ended up staying at the wedding for a shorter amount of time than the car ride in one direction.  The men who went drank, including (and maybe especially) the ones who always say drinking is bad.  This attitude is partially because when they drink they drink like fools, and get stupid, falling down drunk.

Being in Bilaspur has given me some perspective on US road projects like the Big Dig.  India is capable of pulling off giant engineering projects.  They just opened the Sea Bridge in Bombay.  They have built nuclear weapons and enormous dams that.  But in Bilaspur, they can't build a simple bridge or pave a road.

I spent half an hour this morning waiting at a level crossing, where the road crosses the railroad tracks.  We sat for most of this time with no train coming.  I was not able to get a definitive answer as to why the gate was down for so long with no train coming, but the consensus was that people lack the discipline to obey the gate, so they put it down as soon as the train is scheduled to leave the station.  This discussion of the lack of discipline was accompanied by a demonstration; as we waited, vehicles filled the lane for oncoming traffic and setting up the inevitable traffic jam when the gate went up.

This scene unfolded in the shadow of the flyover they are building next to the road.  This has been under construction for over four years.  In the 9 months I have been here, there appears to have been no progress.  The two sides of the bridge do not line up properly, and the building stones on the side of the ramps are bulging outward from the pressure of the earth they are holding back.  The structure does not appear to be engineered to withstand the monsoon, and even when complete, I don't think I would want to travel across it.

Another project being undertaken in the neighborhoods is hooking up a sewer pipe.  Even in our middle class neighborhood there is currently no sewer connection, only open gutters (gross).  They are putting in the pipes, but not connecting the houses at this time.  So they are digging up the road to put in the pipe, and just pushing the dirt back because they don't want to patch thing up properly, as they will be dug up again when they connect the houses.  The result is that for kilometers in any direction, the roads are terrible.  There is a paved strip the size of a sidewalk down the middle, and the rest is dirt than gets torn up when it is wet, and then hardens like wavy concrete when it is dry and sunny, making a bumpy ride for any type of vehicle.

Over the weekend we got an invite to dinner from Joseph and Briana (the American girl) for Monday or Tuesday.  We choose Tuesday because it fit our schedule better, but it also happened to be my birthday.

When we got to their house, I was amazed to find out that they were making beef for dinner!  There is no beef available in Bilaspur, but Joseph is from Hyderabad, and when we was home recently his brother bought some beef.  Bilaspur is a day's train ride away, so they boiled the beef, wrapped it in plastic and put it in the freezer when they got home.

They used it to make a curry and a soup, and I would describe the cut, or at least the result, as being like a pot roast.  It was a really nice surprise.

I also got a few gifts from the JSS workers.  One of the lab techs bought me a shirt in true local style, red and white stripes with random English words on it.  It was a very sweet gift, as he only has a few shirts himself.  I also got a small Hanuman figurine from one of the workers who found out it was my birthday.  Hanuman is a monkey god and warrior, and so when I told Dolly I got a "little sparkly monkey" she pointed out the blasphemy, lol.

In a span of about 2 weeks, its gone from "cold feet when you're barefoot on the floor" to "starting to sweat" and "sleeping with the fan on".  Summer comes fast and early here.

A vaguely-connected, but funny story: The other day, Dolly was not feeling well (nothing serious, just a little nausea).  One of the village health workers asked her if she had showered that morning, because in warmer weather, sometimes you fell sick if you don't shower.  People here are very serious about hygiene.  My theory is that the environment is so dirty, they compensate by themselves being very clean!

This is a description of the types of patients seen on one day by a single doctor at JSS.  The doctors not only see patients, they run the whole place.  There are no other managers or administrators, so they mind the budgets, secure the funding, handle communications, and run the programs... and still have to find time to practice medicine (or vice versa).

http://ramani-fieldnotes.blogspot.com/2010/02/typical-clinic.html

Dolly and I went out to dinner one more time with Jonathan on the last night we would both be in town.  We went to a vegetarian restaurant named Swad that we had heard good things about.  We had not yet visited it because usually when we go out for dinner, we are going for chicken, so do not often visit strictly vegetarian establishments.  However, we had eaten out 2 or 3 time in the past week, so we weren't as protein crazy.

The food started out good, the fries (called "finger chips") and spring rolls were enjoyable, and then after awhile the entrees came.

I have many allergies/food intolerences, among them a dairy allergy.  My dish came out with a sprinkling of cheese on top, which is a common garnish.  This has happened before, and I should know by now to ask that they not put it on.  I scraped the cheese off, and noticed that there were cheese chunks throughout the sauce.

These chunks were too small and numerous to remove, so I ordered another dish, tawa vegetables.  A tawa is a flat frying pan, so basically I was ordering stir fry vegetables.  I asked specifically and multiple times for "no cheese, no paneer", and Dolly added "no cream".  It is not enough to ask for no dairy products, as that is not a food grouping that is known here.  I'm sure sure if you asked specifically about each product, people would know that it came from a cow, but you can't generalize under that description.

When my vegetables came out, there was the sprinkling of cheese on top.  And on closer inspection, there was paneer in the dish.  I called the waiter over, explained the difference in what I had asked for and what I had received, and he took the dish away.  A few minutes later, the dish came back out, clearly the same food with the paneer chunks removed and some, but not all, of the cheese scraped from the top.

I pointed this out to him, and showed him that there were still cheese shavings, which he claimed were gobi (cauliflower) pieces.  After I showed him it was clearly cheese, he told me it was not cheese, it was "decoration" (made of cheese).  I started saying that I had ordered something clearly and specifically, and he had not brought it.  In India, there isn't the concept of "sending a dish back," so I wanted to make it clear that I was not accepting this dish, as it was not what I ordered.  I guess I was getting loud and/or angry, so Dolly took over.  Eventually a manager came over and had the kitchen make something I could eat... by this time is was past 10 oclock, so I was very hungry.

Also, I saw a mouse running under some of the booths, but didn't mention it because Dolly would have freaked out. I don't think we'll be eating there again.

In the course of trying to get my visa situation straightened out, we learned that there is another American in Bilaspur, a white girl who married an Indian man, who is a pastor at a local Protestant church with the suspiciously Catholic name of St. Augustines.

I tracked down the couple, and last night we went to dinner with them.  The husband, Joseph, had been in Bilaspur for about 5 years, and the wife, Bryana, had been here for three months.  They asked us what type of food we were in the food for, and we settled on Chinese, and they knew a place.

The sign out front said "China Bowl: Chinese and Italian Food" and when we went in it felt suprisingly like we could have been in an American strip mall.  Except there was also pizza and pasta on the menu.  The staff was Chinese, and the menu was in English, so I started ordering in English and then realized I wasn't sure what language I should be speaking.  So I spoke my English-for-Indians and pointed.

The food ranged from bland to good, and it was also interesting to see how another American was coping with the local culture.  She seems to be mostly staying at home, as a housewife.  She speaks almost no Hindi, and said she doesn't go to the market by herself.

It was nice to hang out with some other people around our own age who spoke English.

We currently have a visitor from the US at JSS, Dr. Jonathan Fine, a resident of Cambridge, MA.  Jonathan is associated with the Boston chapter of AID (Association for India's Development) and is in the last week of a month-long stay.  Jonathan is 78 and retired, and has spent much of his life in human rights activism in places such as Iraq and the Philippines, among others.

Jonathan is very talkative, and asks questions machine-gun style, one right after another.  You only get time to answer a small percentage of them, as before the answer to one question has started to come, another question knocks that answer out of the way.  He is also very large-hearted, and has been very taken with JSS.  This stay was supposed to be 2 weeks, and he extended it, and he plans on coming back in the summer.

His task is to interview the most oppressed and unfortunate stories to shed light on the relationship of poverty and disease.  His first "case" is a boy who fell into the fire during an epileptic fit, requiring surgery to treat his burns.  This is not an uncommon story.  Jonathan has interviewed the family, finding that they can not afford enough food, they have borrowed heavily against their small plot of land, and they do not even have enough blankets to stay warm at night.  So Jonathan gave them the money to claim their land, buy blankets and buy dal.  His form of philanthropism (or at least, one of his forms) is very immediate.  (For a much more detailed version of this story, visit his newly formed blog at povertyandhealth.blogspot.com)

Last night Dolly and I decided to go out for dinner and we invited Jonathan.  Upon arriving at the restaurant, he invited the auto driver in to join us.  The driver was clearly embarrassed, and after much coaxing agreed to come in for something to eat, but he would not sit with us, and he ordered one of the least expensive things on the menu (a half order of chicken Briyani), which we told the waiters to make a full order.  The waiters, in the comically bungling manner we have come to expect, brought him a half order of mutton Briyani.  The driver ate this quickly and retreated to the comfort of his vehicle.  The other half of the order (this time chicken) was brought to our table near the close of the meal... we had this packed and gave it to the driver.

On the way back, Jonathan, energized by the food, kicked into question mode.  I learned some things I had been wondering about.  The driver owned the auto, and had paid 40,000 rps (about $850) for it.  He was saving to buy a new one, which would cost 110,000 rps (about $2300).  He had 50,000 rupees saved, and loans from the money lender were paid back with 10% monthly interest (as best we could understand).  His savings would take a hit as he is getting married this month.  His bride-to-be is a waitress/counter girl selling tea and samosa, and he is not taking dowry.  He is 35, and used to be an electrician, and he lost his lower leg when he got hit by a truck 3 years ago (oh yeah, he's missing a lower leg, and came into the restaurant on crutches.) .  He has a prosthesis from the government, but it is unusable.

By the end of the ride home, Jonathan had offered to find out more about getting him a proper prosthetic leg, and Dolly had ended up offering to help plan his wedding, which was a difficulty for him as he only had one woman at home to help.

It's been very nice having Jonathan here, not just for the comfort of having a fellow American and Bostonian around to relate to, but also because his energy is inspirational.  Dolly and I have fallen into a kind of crankiness and weariness and to see him jump in with a fresh enthusiasm has been refreshing.

Last week they were building a door on the small enclosure that had been the chowkidar's (watchman's) quarters, where he lived with his wife (our cook) and their daughter.  Its a small area, maybe 8x15, concrete on all sides, with a bench on one side.  This one room was their bedroom, living room, and kitchen.  They had no bathroom, only a tap on the outside of the building. 

The chowkidar was an alcoholic and abandoned his family at the end of November.  His wife continued on performing his duties for the month of December, when she gave up hope on his return and moved in with her family.

Dolly and I always thought it was outrageous that they didn't have a door, and we asked a few times why they didn't have one an how they could get one.  The space now has a door, and new occupants.  It is a man and his wife living there, and we haven't had a chance to find out more about them.