Encounters with a Hindutva klansman

The past week has whizzed by at break-neck speed. I was acting as RA for a Professor doing research at a shrine in Karnataka. As part of the assignment I had to interview a member of the Bajrang Dal, one of the more popular Hindutva outfits in India. I can safely say that this has been by far the most infuriating and frightening experiences of my adult life. We sat at a table in a restaurant in the middle of town--my prof, Anil and I. He seemed like a normal, mild-mannered guy, speaking in tones so soft they were barely more than a murmur. And there he sat across from me speaking so casually about intimidation, violence and hatred. He smiled wistfully as he spoke of the early years of his involvement in the group when their violent mobs were subjected to laathi charges and shell-firing from government authorities. He grew more intense as he spoke of how Muslims lived in "our" country, ate "our" food, breathed "our" air, and about how "we Hindus" had to reclaim what was ours by whatever means. "If a mosquito bites me, I am not willing to sit there and let it suck my blood. I will do whatever is in my power to rid myself of the pest," he said. And then he took on a proud and smug air as he talked about the group's current and future plans: of spreading "awareness" among the public about the threats to our "Hindu nation", of how they "educated" the community and urged them to keep an eye on the Muslims who lived around them, of how they would reclaim Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to form an undivided and Hindu India.

What was so infuriating was that he presumed that just because I was a Hindu, I had some natural empathy for his worldview and his cause; that all that he was doing, he was doing on my behalf, for my sake. And equally frustrating was that I could do nothing to correct this grossly incorrect assessment on his part; had I revealed my politics to him, he would not have been as candid as he had been thus far, thus denying us access to his chilling rhetoric.

This encounter has made me very glad that I did not take up Hindu-Muslim issues in India as the core of my dissertation research. The horror of each encounter, each interview, each new ethnographic relationship, would have driven me quite literally insane. And I do not think I could have dealt with the constant and vivid reminder that this kind of violence and hatred was so close to home, and took on a guise that was so deceptively normal.

An ode to the vegetable market

My greatest joy every week is my trip to the vegetable market. It's located in an alleyway on a bustling street called the Super Market. You get off the auto at the auto stand, make your way past the green and white mosque, past the plastic-walah and his hoard of scrubbers, combs, little boxes, funnels, marbled red and white buckets and toothbrush holders, and then left between the flower-sellers' carts with their gorgeous marigold and tuberose garlands, and their mountains of rose and jasmine. Walk down a few steps and you're in a world that assaults your senses. A make-shift arcade, the vegetable market is cobbled together with bamboo poles and jute sacks as roofing, a few dry goods and vegetable stores made of more solid stuff holding the whole thing together. The moment you step into the market you're hit with the smell...the pungent smell of people and peppers--hundreds and hundreds of people walk past, crushing underfoot green and red peppers that have dropped from the vegetable carts onto the paving. And then as you walk past each , you're nose is seduced by something new, something different...curry leaves, mint, bell-peppers, daikon raddishes...and oh! fenugreek! I stop and buy two bunches of lush green fenugreek leaves for five rupees, their sharp, fresh smell already conjuring visions of methi parathas and aalumethi.
The air is buzzing with the white noise of a thousand voices; here and there you can make out a boy calling out the price of his curry leaves, or a woman hawking garlic...but otherwise, it's a gush of human sound, incoherent and chaotic. And the colours--the colours of people, of clothes of fruit and flowers and vegetables and spices and intermittent patches of blue in the midst of the jute-brown roof.
Then down to my fruit-seller. He sits in the same corner every day. His store is just 3 feet squared--him in the middle (the lord and master of his fruity court), wearing the typical white button-less shirt and pajamas of a marathi merchant, his sacred thread peeking out by his shoulder. I'm a regular here now and he asks: "Apples again today?" But I'm distracted by the pile of fresh figs at his side. They're expensive...fifteen rupees for around seven or eight of them...but I don't care...they're fresh figs! "They're really sweet", he says, and hands me one to eat. I bite into it and only twenty-six years of breeding stops me from moaning in sheer delight. He wraps half a kilogram in newsprint and drops it into my bag. Then finally to the dry grocers. He too sits surrounded by his wares--lentils and rice, nuts and spices. He peers at me through his glasses. His eyes are small and beady through those glasses as thick as coke-bottle bottoms. His silvery beard is chest-long and he wears an embroidered skull-cap. I ask for rice and he produces, seemingly out of thin air, a gigantic ladel. It's bowl is as large as a wall-clock and it's handle around 4 feet long. He stands up, leans over and dips the ladel into a sack of rice miles away, then pours it onto the weighing scale at his side and finally tips it into a bag. I buy 10 grams of cardommom from him, say "shukriya" and head out into the open air.
I cram into an auto with two other women and head home. I stare at my bulging bag...I have rice, lentils, cardommom, raddishes, bell-peppers, grapes...but best of all, I have my frankincense and myrrh--fenugreek and fresh figs.

Feeling like an Austenian debutante

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an anthropologist new in the field must be in want of interlocutors. However little known the feelings or views of such interlocutors may be on her first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the mind of the anthropologist, that she considers the subsequent drought of interlocutors decidedly unacceptable.
Here I am, starting week two in the field; I have set up lessons with the Maulvi at the shrine so I may be able to interact with him a few days every week; I've been given permission to interview folks who run shrine-related institutions and I speak to the Head Honcho here occasionally. But all these interactions are so formal. So I sit in my house here and wait. Wait for some invitation to a soiree with cucumber-sandwiches and lemonade...well, with kababs and Rooh Afza. I sit in my parlour reading the Urdu newspaper or embroidering whatnots, hoping that the phone will ring and I will be invited to tea. The youth of my fieldwork is in wane...will my interlocutors never ask me to call upon them?

Of Pakoda wrappers and titled interlocutors

I was getting ready to leave for the field a couple of days ago and popped down to the pharmacy to buy some allergy medicines...So, in India, things generally get reused--newspapers, magazines, milk cartons, syringes...

But seriously, we have an awesome recycling culture here. So when the dude at the pharmacy handed me a little packet made out of a page from some magazine, I thought little of it. On the drive to the station, I happened to glance down at this little receptacle, when Lo! I saw that it had the question "Is it fair to compare Muslims with terrorism?" followed by the resulting statistics for various Indian cities on it! I immediately noted down the details I could read from the snippet of this magazine, as my mum-in-law's suspicions that her son had married a loon were reaffirmed. And then it happened again! I bought some pakodas on the train and there, wrapping these oily confections was an article on Sufism. I have a whole new appreciation for wrappers and packets.

In other news: A moment of dissonance resulted in what I now consider an altogether improper greeting on my part. I called the head of the local shrine to ask for an appointment. The voice that popped up on the other end spoke English in an accent almost identical to mine. I was so taken aback, I said, "Hi!"... I said "Hi!" to someone with the title of Hazrat! I cringe at the very thought. He's really kind and gentle, so it's all ok...but cringe-worthy nonetheless.

The grail-quest is at an end.

My quest for that holy grail of urban Indian existence has finally borne fruit. Profane in its seeming ubiquity, yet sacred in its strange elusiveness...I speak of unlimited wi-fi access.
So many hoops to jump through...one passport sized photo, one address proof, one ID proof, moolah and the severed head of a bull-frog pickled in brine. Apparently, Bank statements don't count as address proofs anymore. And my passport has an American address (won't do). Only utility bills count; but all utility bills in India arrive under my man's name. So they said I could bring a marriage certificate to show that I'm with the man who pays the bills (hell yeah!). That sounded easy enough. Only, my better half's name has been chronically misspelt in all the bills. So who is to say that the man paying the bills is the same man I married?
So instead of a marriage certificate, I just brought along a mother-in-law. I got the account opened in her name.
End result: I will most likely have internet access any time of the day, every day, this year. Why "most likely"? Rumours have it that the wi-fi deities have been a little petulant off-late (as with most of our gods). The pickled bull-frogs only help so much.

A decidedly odd conversation

A conversation I had with a relative today:

Auntie X: Why are you going to Gulbarga? Gulbarga has so many Muslims!

Rachana: uh...that's sort of the point.

Auntie X: Baffled silence.

At base camp

So I'm in Bangalore now. I suppose Bangalore is my base-camp before I head out to the uncharted territories of small-town India. It's my equivalent of the Jesuit missionary shack on an island full of natives...except that my mother-in-law is making something yummy for me to eat in the kitchen as I write. (We "native anthropologists" are spoilt silly, aren't we?!)
I arrived here 3 days ago. I'm still horribly jetlagged, though. I tried to go to bed last night. Managed to fall asleep at around 1:00 AM. Then at 3:00 AM the neighbourhood mutts started howling and I couldn't go back to sleep. Then my allergies kicked in today with all the desi dust. But all said and done, it feels good to be in India. It's nice to turn on the TV and see men in blue pajamas running accross a strip of dirt; it's nice to open the newspaper and see that the Karnataka women's Kabaddi team is on a winning streak; it's nice to be able to eat Chickoo and wear jasmine in my hair. Things will be less comfy once I head out to Gulbarga next week. The weather is guaranteed to be terrible...goodbye gentle Bangalore breezes; hello heat.
In other news, a newly founded group, the Sri Ram Sene (right-wing Hindu moral policing club) has been overactive this month in Karnataka. The group allegedly kidnapped and harrassed this girl in Mangalore for being chummy with a Muslim boy. They're also getting super excited about the opportunities to moral police on Valentine's Day. I plan to keep a low profile and studiously avoid men who call me "sister".