One of the major differences between the socio-economic structures of the US and India is the ratio of the costs of materials and labor. Compared to America, Indian labor is ridiculously cheap, and materials are relatively expensive... steel and glass and other materials are moved fairly easily, levelling out their prices all over the world. People are not as mobile, especially internationally, and so the labor rates vary wildly.

This is apparent in many ways, most recently the other night as I looked at a plate made from leaves held together by little slivers of wood. In the US, the costs of the labor involved would make it much more expensive than paper plates. Here, it is a simple, economical solution. Another is example is street cleaning. They do not use big, hundred thousand dollar machines. They pay old women to sweep them with brooms, probably less than a dollar a day. Imagine how insane it is to spend you whole day literally sweeping the street of dirt and dust.

Overall, it affects the balance of what kinds of things are economically feasible. Working class families can afford a housecleaner and/or a cook, but must rely on a bicycle for transportation. Markups in restaurants are much less, as the labor in the dining room and kitchen is such a small percentage of the cost.

It also effects construction approaches. Heavy machinery is again put aside in favor of manual labor. Need 2 tons of bricks moved up to the 4th floor? Hire a few women to carry them on their heads.

Much of the staff here at JSS, who are performing skilled labor, whether lab work or computer work, get paid around 3000rps/month, or about $60 a month. Thats a long shift at US minimum wage, and some of you make that in an hour. Here, it is enough to live adequately, though not luxouriously or even "comfortably". It is still much more than manual laborers, and is also a reliable paycheck. There is no risk of going hungry, which is a comfort not afforded to a large percentage of the population.

In contrast, our apartment in a high-rise (5 floors), in a nice neighborhood rents for that same $60/month, and we will be getting paid a few times the amount of the local workers. It is a struggle to balance the feelings of worrying how to get by for a month on what used to be a days' pay and the sense of guilt at getting paid so much more than the people we work next to.

We went into Bilaspur yesterday to see our new apartment, pick up a SIM card, and eat some chicken. The apartment is identical to the guest house, and though there's no furniture yet, its pretty nice. We should be able to make a home out of it.

Unfortunately, with respect to the chicken, we were not able to get any, as it was a festival holiday. We knew that it was a local thing where wives fast for their husbands and single women fast inhopes of landing a husband, but we did not know that it was also Ganesh's birthday, and the first festival of festival season. Long story short... on this festival day, no chicken.

We had gone to the restaurant with two German medical students visting for a month. Both are women and very light skinned, and one is almost 6 feet tall and blonde. I thought I attracted attention, but it is nothing like the attention these girls get. Men stopped and stared, or catcalled, and there were flatbed trucks full of young men who all stared and waved. They took it pretty well though, and pointed out that it was all just staring and no one said anything to them or did anything, and they had gotten used to it.


When we got back, we heard the sounds of tablas and singing while we were eating dinner. We were going to go out to find it when our friend Surrinder told us he knew where it was comign from and took us there. The sounds were from a temple where they were singing song-stories from scriptures. I had planned on just sitting by the edge and watching, but that proved to be impossible, as my white skin made me a celebrity. They took us on a tour of the temple, and the various shrines, and there was a very cool and ancient tree growing in the center, with long vines coming down from the branches, which would themselves take root and from new trunks. It was then explained to us that Ganesh was invoked when new things were started, and this (being Ganesh's day) was a day to start new things. I will take it as an auspicious sign that this was the day we saw our new place.

We stayed for awhile until food was served... I don't think they would have let us leave if we had wanted to. Part of these festivals are apparently free food. We sat on long mats, and plates made of leaves were place in front of us. They were made of 4 or 5 leaves, held together with pieces of toothpicks, and must have been assembled by hand. The food was rice and a chickpea curry with a side of fresh salad/salsa. The freshness of the salad (onions, tomatoes, chilis, and corriander) was especially refreshing, as fresh veggies have been very much missing from our diet. After the dinner we, left along with many other people... apparently many people show up just for the food.

I have a new girlfriend now. I had noticed her staring at me at the canteen during meals. I would look over at the other table and she would be looking over at me. One evening I was reading a book by the a light near the clinic and she shyly came over and asked my name (in English) and where I was from. I asked her the same questions, and then she ran off.

She's not really my girlfriend... just an admirer. She told Dolly that she is so interested in finding out about America, and in (Hindi) movies, Americans are always such bad guys, but I seem so nice (and have such nice eyes). We heard through the gossip circle that one evening last week I came to dinner and she made her friends change seats so I would have to sit next to her.

Also, for the single ladies out there, if you are looking to marry a young Hindustani man involved in the medical profession and working for social equality, we have a couple of eligible bachelors you may want to check out... get in touch for details.

Its also beginning to cool down here. Days have been in the mid 80s and nights have been as low as 72, and we have started getting up in the night to turn off the fan. This is a bit of a nuisance, due to the mosquito net around the bed, but I'm no longer damp from sweat every moment of the day, and I don't have to force myself to gulp down water by the liter.

Our phone got cut off today. We had submitted the documentation, but the driver's license of our friend had a scratch on it, so the paperwork was rejected.

Getting a SIM card here is harder than getting a bank account, or even a passport.

I would just like to give a big F&^* YOU to all the Indian politicians and bureaucrats who have conspired so effectively to make what should be a simple task so difficult. You are making your great country look bad.

(I suppose, on the order of things, making phones difficult to get is no less an pointless reaction to a terrorist attack than declaring war on a totally unrelated country. It is also less bloody and wasteful.)

On the JSS campus, Dolly and I often addressed as "sir" and "madam", and not just in direct address. I may be asked "Sir, where is madam?" if I show up somewhere without Dolly. Some of it may be the difficulty many have with my name. The "th" sound at the end is uncommon and I think the exact vowel sound of the e is too, so I often just introduce myself as "say-t". Dolly's name is easy, though. Some of it is that at first they didn't know our names, and sir and madam were polite ways of referring to us, especially since they didn't know if we were doctors or important.

There are a fair number of people who live on campus. Out of the twelve doctors, two live on campus. One stays next to where we are staying above the lab, in a small room that is at least larger than ours. She has worked at missions in the past, and I suspect that the simplicity of her accomdations is some type of devotional choice. The other doctor is married to the agricultual outreach guy, and lives with him and her two children in a small house on the edge of campus.

Most of the people who live on, or right next to campus are regular staff - nurses, kitchen staff, farmers and lab workers. They are stuck out here with not much to do - there is no entertainment available in the village, the only gathering places are work spaces and the canteen, and even social drinking does not exist. They seem to gossip a lot and Dolly and I, as both newcomers and Americans, are a popular topic. Sometimes it is like talking to a large collective consiousness with many faces. They find out we are not married, and soon everybody knows. They find out I eat cow and pig, and soon everybody knows.

Another component of the dynamic is that most of these people are from small villages, and have not been exposed to ideas that an American would take for granted. So when I try to explain that ethnically I am Christian, but don't associate with any particular religious faith, it is not an idea that is comprehensible. It took a while to figure this out, as these are intelligent, educated young people who remind me of many of my friends back home, and I assumed some exposure to American culture, at least through TV. But this is not Bombay or Hyderabad, it is the tribal heartland of India, and though there are American movies on TV, few know enough English to make watching them enjoyable, so for now this is one part of the world American culture has not conquered... although I CAN buy a Coke at several places in the village.

Today I learned how to ride a motorcycle. Ragesh took me to the field across the street, where after stalling about 10 times, I got the feel of the clutch. After a little spin around the field, we went a kilometer or so down the road and back. The motorcycles here are small and efficient, and not the powerful speed demons you find in the US. They don't get ridden much faster than 30-40 mph. (and yes mom, I know thats fast enough to get hurt, but the danger in motorcycles is when you ride like a maniac. Also, there are no seatbelts in the Jeep.)

We have also gone to villages the past two days where Dolly and I have sat in on meetings with local groups of farmers. These farmers are getting incentives from AID Boston to practice SRI in half an acre of their land. They meetings are in Hindi, so all I understand is pani (water). Its an especially dry summer, so a lot of what the farmers are saying is pani this, pani that.

Today's meeting was a little more interesting, mostly because of one farmer who was complaining about monkeys in his fields, along with imitations of what they do. One of the things they do is grab at snakes and play with them until they're dead, listening to the head every now and then to see if they can hear anything.

There was also a funny exchange (translated by Dolly) where Jacob told the farmers that two of them willing to work with water harvesting would be sent to Orissa or Jharkand (neighboring states), to see how they do it there. He asked them if they knew what Jharkand and Orissa were, and most admitted they didn't and one said it was a train station he had been to. It shows the type of life these people live... they know a lot about their local environment, and the neighboring states are just not in any way relevant to what happens in their lives in their village.

As Dolly posted, I was sick on both Thursday and Saturday due to poop water. We do our best to stick to clean (and treated) water sources, but its just not possible to do 100%. The most likely suspect is the canteen, which did test positive for fecal bacteria. We use the water there to wash our hands and dishes, so thats going to cause some illness. Exposure to poop is pretty much inevitable, as there is poop everywhere. There are cows. There are dogs. There are open sewers, and there are even little kids running into the grass for a squat. Luckily, we are prepared, and have enough antibiotics packed with us to handle multiple such incidents.

There is a small but interesting library here at JSS, and I've found some interesting books on the subject of India that I thought I'd share.

The first one is called Leaves From the Jungle by Verrier Elwin. Its about a British man (who eventually became an Indian citizen) who set up an Ashram in the general area I am staying. Its in the form of a diary, and from the 1930's, and an interesting look at village life and dynamics from that time.

Another very good one was India in Slow Motion, by Mark Tully, formerly a BBC journalist. Its about governance in India, which seem like a dry topic, but each chapter focuses on a particular event or personality, and reads well. The general theme is that India is corrupt and changes slowly, and its interesting to see the analysis of the power dynamics that make it so.

As an aside, the politics here are kind of weird. The major parties (BJP and Congress) don't stand for anything in particular. For the past while, they have been trading off being in power, and the agenda of the ruling party is consistent, as is the platform of the opposition. When they switch power, they switch agendas. Its like if all of the sudden Obama was for the war in Iraq, and the Republicans were suddenly against it. Here, the party in power is mostly for the status quo and in the vested interests, and the opposition party is pro-reform and anti-corruption... until they get elected and benefit from the control of government funds and planning.

One last book I just finished reading is called India After Ghandi, which is over 800 pages if you include the index and footnotes. It is a very detailed and interesting look at the formation and stabilization of the Indian nation, the conflicts and political movements, and the leaders and their policies.