On a farm, what was I thinking?

Jan 07, 2012:

Well, I made it and I’m okay. 

I’m not entirely positive where to start, so I might jump around a bit, and for that, I apologize.  Oh hell, I might as well start chronologically.  Ergo, my day in Delhi the day before I left:

Short and sweet; I didn’t really do a whole lot.  I went to Khan Market again, so I could enjoy more things from the pâtisserie, and I wandered around aimlessly for a while.  Kinda just browsing, I guess.  I was going to hop in a rickshaw (I have a hard time not calling these tuk-tuks still) but after speaking with 5 different drivers, only one of them knew where the location I wanted to go was, and he wouldn’t do it for less than 200R.  I looked on a map: Gandhi Smriti was only a few kilometres from the market.  So I didn’t go, and that was a bit disappointing.  I wanted to see the house that Gandhi lived in before his death.  He died there, too.  I guess it’s a bit of a shrine to him, and since Gandhi is practically god in this country, I thought it would be nice, and respectful to check out, non? 

C’est la vie.

I was pretty aimless for the remainder of the day.  I found some international grocery shops and spent far more than my daily allotted amount on food (this isn’t a concrete number, but I just know I went over it anyhow) ...I got a few apples, and a chocolate soy milk, and some pumpernickel bread, and some sharp cheddar.  The chocolate soy milk complimented my lunch quite well – a baguette with brie from the pâtisserie.  Hell, I was just excited to have proper milk again.  None of this lactating-cow-business.

I spent most of the afternoon cloistered away in my hotel room – browsing the internets, and organizing all the little souvenirs I’ve purchased in the last three weeks, and organizing my travel journal.  I was a week behind. 

In the evening, I went out for a cheap dinner – little place just down the street that does thali’s for 50R.  A thali, which means ‘lunch’ in Hindi, is a type of ‘try-everything’ dish.  It was a dhal, a potato curry, rice, and some chapattis.  It was okay, but I mean, I can’t complain – it was a dollar.  After that, I went on a search for a post box, and bumped into this American from New York City, who walked up to me with the ubiquitous “Where are you from?” that all touts start with.  Thankfully, or unthankfully, he wasn’t a tout, and after showing me where the post box was, he tried to take me to dinner.  I declined, fervently, but somehow got convinced into going for a drink with him. 

I was nervous, but he seemed friendly enough, though in hindsight, I regret going.  I try to be nice to everyone, if I can, and I don’t think I had much of a choice with this man.  His name is Roger, and he is 37, and of Indian descent, and he was in Delhi visiting his parents (as he explained it, he kinda does the half and half thing) ...and he was the most insecure, rude, nervous, unconfident thirty-seven year old man I’ve ever met. 

Firstly, I thought he was a raging homosexual.  Which is cool, believe me – but he was insistent on telling me over and over that he is straight, even though I never asked about his sexuality.  Come to think about it, I never asked him anything.  I spoke to him when he asked me questions, and I listened, though mostly because I didn’t have a choice – any time I said anything, he interrupted me to say something of his own.  He’d start almost all of his sentences with “So, tell me about you – no wait, that came out wrong, oh, I should confess something, oh, now you’re looking at me funny” etc, etc.  And apparently we “clicked on an extremely deep level” ...which, if that was the case, he was really poor at reading people.  We didn’t click.  I just didn’t want to say anything ill towards him, because he had the demeanour of someone who would jump off the roof if I did.  And then he started to hit on me – and I was like “buddy, are you serious?” ...which launched the “I’ve got a boyfriend” speech, so then he switched to trying to invite me out for a ride in his jaguar, which his daddy bought for him in Delhi, and to see his apartment, because he was apparently an architect, and designed it himself (but his father bought it for him) ...but only during the daytime, he said, because he was afraid to anger my boyfriend. 

The shit I put up with because I don’t want to be rude, I swear. 

Thankfully, I had a Skype date with Damon right after that, and used it as an excuse to get out of there, my soda untouched.  I took down his details, with the promise to add him to Facebook, but I have absolutely no intention of doing that at all.  I’ve already deleted it, and I never gave him my last name or my email address.  He tried asking for my number, and that was the only point in the conversation where I blatantly said ‘no’.  He also tried to go in for a hug when we parted, and I made a slow, deliberately obvious step back, and allowed him to shake my hand instead. 

But really.  I mean really.  If I was a man, I wouldn’t have this problem – I don’t even look other people in the eyes here.  Anything that involves a possible conversation initiation I avoid like the goddamned plague.  Leave me alone, weird strangers!

Anyhow.  Rant completed. 

The train ride was a long 6 hours to Sirsa, and uneventful for the most part.  I fell asleep almost immediately, and when I awoke a half hour later, it was because the train attendant was yelling at the THREE people sitting in the two seats next to me.  Where did they come from?  How did I not wake up to three people squishing into a two person spot?  I was awake after that, and the three people had to become two people again, so I finished reading Shantaram (I’m done now!) ...while I was reading, those people got off the train and were replaced by two little kids, their parents sitting in a few seats up the train aisle from them.  And I loved it – I learned the entire family’s names by the end of the journey.  The boy must have been about 8 or 10, and his name was Hemansool (not responsible for all misspellings – I’m spelling them phonetically) ...and he could speak a little English, and he was practicing his English by reading my book over my shoulder.  It was adorable.  He’d stop and ask me to pronounce words when he wasn’t sure, and I stopped reading, or slowed down my reading a lot so he could follow a few paragraphs a page.  His little sister, I later learned, is named eye-ewe-she (I really don’t know how to spell her name, this is how it sounded) ...and she couldn’t speak much English, just ‘hello’ and ‘hi’.  She stood at my legs for a while and stared out the window, and the siblings consistently tickled each other next to me.  I joined in on their little games after a while.  The girl kept staring at me, so every time I caught her doing it, I’d wink, or stick out my tongue, or grin back at her.  Then, when they were spinning the little footrests around in circles (they spun on a horizontal axis) ...I joined in just long enough to make sure they noticed I was doing it too.  I really liked them, and we had very simple conversations with each other, and I made sure to speak really slowly. 

A few hours into the train ride, the seats in front cleared up, and the parents moved to be closer to the children, and so I got to know the father, Ramesh.  He introduced his wife as “and this is my wife” ...and I regret not learning her name.  I imagine it is practice to not introduce your wife by name, but I feel like it was something I should have spoken up and asked for.  She was very quiet, and didn’t speak to me, but she did smile at me when she saw me speaking to her children, and her smile was radiant. 

They were very pleasant and helpful, but as I got closer and closer to Sirsa, I started to get really nervous, and I was fighting a really bad surge of loneliness at the same time.  I think in the half hour prior to arriving (an arrival that was a half hour late, to boot) ...I think I took Rescue Remedy probably three times, to try and calm my nerves.  My insides were writhing in pain, and I could feel my stomach turning to liquid, and my legs were shaking.  At this point, I had no idea if I was going to get off at the right stop, because they don’t announce the stops, and they don’t stop for long, and I had no idea if someone was going to meet me at the train station.  I arranged and arranged and arranged by email, and I never received a full confirmation. 

I was in a bad way when I got off the train, in the dark, to a light drizzle, and the station was dark, with several sleeping bodies strewn across the floor.  I walked out of the station to the car park, and somebody called my name across the station, and when I looked up, and saw a friendly, portly looking Sikh man, and I heard my name, I broke out in a laugh and a grin, and the flood of relief that coursed through me was almost audible.  I was terrified nobody was going to be there, in a town where English isn’t prevalent, and all I had was a string of cell phone numbers to call if there wasn’t anybody. 

I learned the man that picked me up was Harpal, the same man I’ve been conversing with through email (his English is much better spoken than written, it seems) ...he was supposed to be in Delhi, but his plans changed, and so he was available to pick me up.  We got into his car and started driving to his village, Theri Baba Sawan Singh, about 15km outside of Sirsa. 

He introduced me to his wife, and then his...farmhand, servant? ...served us some dinner and some tea.  I didn’t make it to bed last night until midnight, and I slept on a hard pallet under a pile of blankets, but I am used to such discomforts, and my sleep was reasonably well. 

As for what I am to do here, I haven’t a clue.  I’m not allowed to work in the farm field with the workers, because I am a girl and girls don’t do those things, but there is a kitchen garden that I can work in if it needs work, and when Surrinder (the wife) learned that I can make bread from scratch, she decided we should do that on the weekend.  Other than that, I’m not sure what I will do, but I’ll figure it out. 

There is hot water, apparently, and they have a filter to filter tap water into drinkable water, though it makes me nervous to consume, because after one cup last night, my stomach was in a bad way this morning.  I might filter their filtered water through MY filter just to be safe.  We’ll see how the day progresses.  There isn’t, however, any toilet paper, except for the bit I brought myself, and they use a stream of water that comes from the toilet bowl to clean themselves with.  I’m okay with this if I absolutely have to, but I prefer to use toilet paper.  Yet again, I’m having to lower my idea of what a civilized life is – after all these months abroad, it is hard to imagine a time when I thought squat toilets were unthinkable, or that washing ones self with water instead of paper wasn’t acceptable.  But I guess this is life.   

Jan 08, 2012:

I dislike when my first impressions are unfounded.  These are very angry people, and their anger makes me uncomfortable in its ferocity.  I can’t speak or understand Hindi, but insofar as I can tell, the husband and the wife are constantly angry with each other, and they sleep in separate rooms.  Both take turns yelling at the servants – I’ve yet to see them offer kind words or kind facial expressions to the two servants. 

Their son showed up late last night, and so far, I’m quite fond of him, simply because his English is proper, and when he woke up this morning to his parents yelling, he walked into the room, and in English told them both “to chill”.  Just the simple use of the English slang, the modern clothes he wears, and the way he handles his arguing parents makes me feel immediately attached to him.  He doesn’t know this, and I’m okay with that. 

The husband and the wife haven’t stopped arguing, but at least there is a moderator now who speaks Hindi.  I’m currently hiding on the hard pallet that is my bed, lavishing in the fact that we have electricity right now, enough to charge and use my laptop, anyhow, and I’m blasting Atmosphere in my ears, in the hopes that I can drown out their angry voices.  It’s almost working. 

I’ve been in India long enough now to hear Hindi spoken softly, with compassion, with love, and so, I know it’s possible.  Maybe it would be better if I couldn’t read facial expressions so well – I was tempted to tell Harpal this morning that being angry is bad for his health.  It seemed like a poor idea, though.

So, I am here, and I am allowed to do very little.  I was told that I can do whatever I want, which sadly, doesn’t include everything I’d actually like to do.  I’m not allowed to work in the field with the workers, though I was taken on a tour of the farm yesterday morning, and it’s beautiful.  The farm here grows everything organically, using a layer of hay mixed with cow manure to fertilize the fields in between crops.  They grow chickpea, lentil, mustard, wheat, guava, radish, and flaxseed.  Then there is their personal garden, which has spinach and other vegetables.  Carrots, peas, etc. 

(I’ve just been told by the son that there hasn’t been any fighting: it’s apparently just how they express themselves.  He told me that if the house is silent, then I should worry.  Either way, the noise is stressful.) 

Anyhow, back to farming: the farm is about 600 acres, spread evenly between a few sons, so Harpal owns about 200 acres.  In the distance, there are sugar cane crops, and on one of his brother’s sides, there is non-organically grown cauliflower, guava, wheat, mustard, tomatoes, and banana trees. 

The crops are growing, even in Indian winter – in fact, I learned, that they grow the best during the winter.  In the summer during the heat and then the monsoon, all they can grow is basmati.  The fact that things are still growing is surprising, only because it is actually cold here.  I have to wear socks and a sweater in the mornings, and it isn’t until the heat of the day that I can go back to barefeet and a t-shirt.  At night, it’s chilly, and it rains every other day, making the field muddy.  I’m not dressed for muddy.

There is rarely electricity, only sporadically and at night.  They have their TV hooked up to a generator, and so that works all the time, but the rest of the house is dependent upon faulty electrical plants across Haryana – according to the news, three of them are down right now.  There is only hot water when there is electricity, and it takes an hour to heat the tank enough to have a bath.  I’m back to washing from a bucket, which when I asked if there is a shower, I was told “you would not enjoy a shower.  A bucket is better.”

Both husband and wife are very opinionated, and the western world is very, very wrong, regardless what I have to say on the contrary.  For the most part, I stay silent and just do as I’m told.  Yesterday, I spent all afternoon untangling the wife’s yarn trunk so she can knit, which is all she does all day long.  I have mixed feelings about each:

Surrinder:  She’s whiny.  Oh my god, is she whiny.  And she repeats herself to me four or five times, and if I have an opinion on the contrary, she dismisses it by telling me her way is better and I can do things my way in my home country.  This includes chopping vegetables (I got in trouble for cutting cabbage into chunks that were too big for the soup last night.  It’s a fucking leaf – it’ll shrink.), I have to do everything just as she says, and she wants me to do different things than the husband all the time.  Yesterday, I got a big lecture about how if I was her daughter, I would be taking better care of her, because she’s sick right now, and I should take care of her.  I’m sorry, ma’am, but fuck you.  At the same time, I pity her, which is a terrible state of mind to be in, this pity – I think she is just very lonely, and hasn’t got anyone to talk to very often.  And so, I put up with it – half listening – and I let her whine without saying too much.  And she thinks I’m a bad daughter because mom is single, and that’s somehow my fault.  It’s my fault that I don’t live at home to raise my siblings, too.  Again, a singular four letter word follows my thoughts on this.    

Harpal:  He reminds me a lot of Alex’s father.  He’s in his mid-sixties, and rather...portly – and he is very stubborn, and has a very strong opinion of the world, to the point that when I found out he had given me tap water to drink, and then I was rather sick from it, it was ‘my fault because my western stomach couldn’t handle it and India’s water is perfectly drinkable’.  He’s very knowledgeable about farming, and I admire that; I admire his strong opinions, too, though I dislike how quick he is to dismiss anything I say.  Both of them ask me questions, and then interrupt me when my answer isn’t “Indian” enough. 

Anyhow, that’s enough of that.  Life is slow (oh god, is it slow) and I’m getting a cold, I think.  The wife gave me some homeopathic meds for my stomach yesterday, because India really isn’t agreeing with me, and they work better than immodium was, surprisingly.  However, I woke up this morning with a really sore throat, and I feel a little headcoldish, not too bad, but just a bit.  I think it’s just because India is so unhygienic and I don’t exactly have the best immune system right now.  Also, Surrinder is sick, and she is not very clean – I think I maybe caught something from her. 

Things are interesting here, and as far as I can tell, I’m allowed to cook (I helped make vegetable soup last night, and by damn, it was the best thing I’ve eaten in a while) ...and today, I’m going to hand wash my laundry, and help to make bread and banana bread, but other than that, I’m basically just allowed to lay around and do nothing.  I think the wife is going to get me to organize her medicine cabinet later – she’s really lazy.  She wants to start going for jogs in the morning, and I agreed to this morning, but when I woke up at the appointed time, she was still asleep, and I didn’t bother to wake her.  The silent moments in the morning are the only ones I get. 

I’m not going to stay here two weeks – I’ll let it go a week, I think, and then after that, I’m going to come up with an excuse to leave.  It won’t be hard, I think.  I was expecting this to be peaceful, and that illusion has been shattered for me.  Maybe WWOOFing in India was a bad idea, but then again, I know I am being harsh because I am frustrated.  My opinions on things, like usual, will probably change day by day until I realize I love it here (or at least, that has been my experience so far – I still miss Thailand and Thai culture).