Sovereign Nations

I love my birthday - it’s myyyyyy day. James and I agree that birthdays are the most important holidays. We went and bought me some books, then went to a fancy bakery that does the kinds of cakes I think of as BD cakes and got slices of Black Forest, and this evening we’ll be going to a fancy hotel buffet for dinner. It’s better than you’re imagining, being a buffet and all. Indian food lends itself very well to being kept warm in that buffet kind of way…I just hope they have that Malabar Fish…Mmmmmmm!

On this, my thirty-third birthday, I’m also celebrating the successful completion of the NaNoWriMo Competition. This is my page on their website. Now, the goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That makes it a rather short novel, since the standard novel length is 80-100K, but it is still a shitload of writing to get done in one month. I finished at 76,386 words. Pretty cool, right?

I wrote most days, getting a ton done when I knew what I wanted to say and not much done when I hadn’t figured out what happened next. Duh, right? Well, I hadn’t thought about that part very much before we started. I finished my last go-round on my first manuscript on October 15th and sent it to a small, select group of people who seemed interested in reading it (avoiding any people who responded to the idea with the deer-in-the-headlights look). That gave me about two weeks between finishing that one (for the moment) and beginning the next one. ‘Cause that’s the rules, see. You can’t start before the 1st.

I spent two weeks pulling my vague idea together, doing a bunch of research on the careers of the main characters, some of the points I was thinking about covering, and the backgrounds of the MCs. One large part of the plot line is that the action ties into the process of building an eco-friendly house. So I worked on pulling together all the information I could find on green building and running it by my expert adviser - Harold Rhodes. He’s wonderful - really thoughtful and insightful, and an expert in the wild and woolly world of contractors. He’s also married to my mother, though calling him my step-dad feels kind of weird since he’s younger than my own husband.

If I hadn’t spent those two weeks creating character sketches and backgrounds, researching construction methods and timelines, and writing and rewriting a synopsis, I can’t imagine having been able to write much at all. It’s amazing to me, but it seems that a lot of NaNoWriMo people just sat down and started typing. Wow. I’m not that creative.

My novel’s not quite finished. I’m planning a real full MS, and I think…I think I have about 15,000 more words to write. I should be able to toss that off by Friday. Heh.

Here’s the synopsis of the book’s beginning, though it will probably change in revisions. This takes you a little more than halfway through the book. This version of the synopsis ends when the book starts the downhill, momentum-gathering sleigh ride toward the grand finale.

Root of the Lilikoi Synopsis

by Dena Hankins

Construction project manager Kerala Hilma is new to Hawaii, skeptical of the allure but drawn by the boom in work. She chooses to work for Malama Construction, the mid-sized, family-owned kind of company she likes, and starts work within a week.

Tired of the glass office, CEO and solar power engineer Ravi Dietrich needs some R&R and R&D. A dedicated scientist, he’s wilting in the corporate hothouse and rarely making it to the ocean to soak his saltwater soul. He blends experimentation with time off by planning an off-grid model eco-vacation-house. A killer deal on waterfront land sends him to Hawaii from California to bring the dream to life.

Malama Construction has no history in green building, so the boss gives the Request for Bid to the new girl with her fancy Ivy League education. Though Kerala submits a bid several hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than her competition, Ravi hires Malama as general contractors on the strength of Kerala’s impeccable research and demonstrated commitment to building to his specs.

Kerala hears that the Kama’aina (locals) will try to protect what they believe is the site of an ancient burial ground. Kerala is hardheaded and not in the least superstitious, so she takes the rumors as an indication of possible difficulties with local workers.

Ravi and Kerala strike sparks off one another and enjoy a flirtatious relationship when they’re not arguing details. They observe the boundaries of professionalism through the occasional visits for planning and design meetings. As she and Ravi refine the plans via email and phone conversations, they get to know each other without the pressure of their undeniable attraction, developing a strong mutual respect.

Kerala is beset by permitting problems, bumbling suppliers, and a community of sub-contractors that won’t even bid on the work. She gets the crew working on deconstructing an old hotel for recyclable building materials while she shouts, finesses, and bulls her way through the obstructions.

After a perilous slide down a hillside rigged to collapse, she finds evidence that her problems have been sabotage. She calls on her two best men, Kekipi and Jack, to help her find the wrongdoer. But the men seem to have a secret.

Ravi flies in the next day, ostensibly to help sort materials from the hotel deconstruction. He has come to warn Kerala of a pattern he’s seen in her reports – he wants her to watch out for sabotage! Kerala is impressed by his analysis, but not by his insistence that she let him move in to protect her. The desk jockey protecting the construction worker? Preposterous. Their fight escalates beyond polite words, and the heat is intensified by their smoldering physical awareness. They achieve a fragile détente, but settle nothing.

Days later, Kerala is run off the road while walking her dog. She gathers Kekipi, Jack, and Ravi at her house, bringing them up to date and asking a distraught Ravi to stay with her after all. Kerala challenges Kekipi with his suspicious behavior and he explains that he was involved with a Hawaiian separatist group when he was younger. The work disruption follows the pattern of his old community, but he promises that they aren’t behind the physical violence to her personally and explains, worried, that the separatists he questioned are also worried about the rogue.

After Jack and Kekipi leave, Kerala indulges herself by throwing down a sensual gauntlet that Ravi knows she can’t back up, bruised and tired as she is. As she expects, Ravi declines to take advantage of her upset state of mind and sleeps on her Laz-e-Boy recliner. Ravi gets his revenge by planning a long, slow, painful mutual seduction.

Ravi suggests that Kerala quit, which would remove the barriers to their relationship while also ensuring her safety. She is outraged at the idea of slinking away from a project in which she’d invested so much energy. She is determined to get the upper hand and insists that they work together. Ravi, frustrated once again, moves forward with his plans to bring them to a peak of need and finding the breaking point. Finally, their sexual pressure explodes in furious lovemaking.

The situation explodes when they dig up a lilikoi tree for replanting and find a body in the ground nearby. The Hawaiian Island Burial Council and the state Historical Preservation officer arrive quickly, but so do the police. When the body is analyzed, far from being one of ancients, this body is only a decade old. The story comes to light that a previous owner tried to build on the same land but disappeared, and his estate discontinued the development.

Sure enough, Kerala’s crew has improperly exhumed the previous owner, who doesn’t seem to have died of natural causes. Now there’s a murder to match her accidents and the string of sabotage. The only good thing about this find is that Ravi can’t point the protective finger at Kerala any longer. He seems to be in danger as well.

I don’t know, but I had a ball yesterday.

James and I rode out to this big empty square. I remembered it being very quiet there one Sunday when we were looking for a beach, so it seemed like a good place to try my hand at riding the motorcycle myself.

James has been driving everywhere we go. He has a ton of experience riding motorcycles and he picked up the rhythm of Indian traffic very quickly. Since he doesn’t have to think about operating the motorcycle, he was able to focus on getting used to the much more dangerous part.

Me, I rode a 50cc motorcycle when I was around 10 years old. I remember enjoying it to a certain extent, but I was already too big for it and preferred the go-cart, the tractor, or - if Dad felt like giving me a lesson - the truck. I remembered the feeling of letting off the clutch and twisting the throttle. I remembered how the motorcycle seemed to want to jump out from under me. That was one of the things I had learned on the little bike - how to really sit on it and ride with it.

When I first tried riding the Bullet we have now, I felt the same thing. I was standing so firmly on the ground that I almost didn’t move when the bike started rolling. It came back to me suddenly, in that moment, how it felt to ride a motorcycle. Way fun!

But I didn’t really get any practice. I just got going, tried out the gears, and turned around in circles. This was in an empty festival yard - a big open area with some pitted spots, some gravel, and some grass. My newly-healed ankle whined at me with even that little bit of starting the bike and shifting, so I didn’t last long. All I really achieved was the feeling that, in an emergency, I could get James and myself to a hospital or hotel or something.

Yesterday, I more or less ran drills while James sat, bored but alert in case I ran into trouble. One side of the square has six little sleeping policemen, so I practiced remembering to clutch when I slowed way down for them. That side was lined with houses. One side was clear and wide without much traffic, so I could get up a little speed and practice running up and down through the gears. One side was pitted and I practiced weaving around the potholes. And the last side was in real traffic, so I practiced looking for an opening and getting out into the flow.

So there I was going around and around. On the first circle, the guys hanging out stared at me. On the second circle, I killed the engine and had a little trouble starting it. Those guys were all over me, advising me on how to make it start. I knew what they were trying to tell me - use the compression release and give it a little throttle - but just nodded and smiled while I got it going. They all cheered and waved me off.

On the third circle, they looked confused. A small gaggle of women had appeared in the walled enclosure fronting their house and they smiled at me with enormous eyes. Then a group of children gathered and sat as though I was better than TV.

Around I went, and each time I passed these people, they looked both confused and delighted. I had slowed way down for a kid - you know, a baby goat - and the guys yelled, where are you going?

Now I thought that was a pretty funny question. Here I was, going in circles, and they thought I was lost? I just laughed and kept moving. The next time around, the kids asked me and I answered without stopping, around in circles. I laughed again, but this time with a slight incredulity that added a sharp edge to the sound.

The ladies asked last. This time I stopped. I put the bike in neutral and leaned forward on the handlebars. “Practicing,” I said, and they looked confused. “Learning to ride the bike,” I said and made a circle with my finger. One lady said, “Ah!” and chattered at the others. Soon, they were all smiling and nodding. As I waved and started off again, one lady leaned over the wall and passed the word to the next-door neighbors.

I rode off, knowing that the word would spread. Maybe they’d stop staring! No such luck. A woman riding a bullet is a rather exciting sight. A white woman in a churidar riding a bullet in circles is just plain comedy. Or so it seemed to me. The whole neighborhood ended up coming out to see. I felt like I should be doing tricks - standing on my head on the seat, popping wheelies and jumping the rock piles.

Finally, I got tired of the circles and the staring. James still wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of riding bitch, and I wasn’t enthusiastic about being responsible for his safety as well as my own and that of the others on the road. Too much to worry about.

I crossed the road with the major traffic and took off down a quiet stretch, straight and with few side roads. It was a perfect place to get up some speed and feel like I was really riding. There were sleeping policemen periodically along the road and I had to slow quickly once I saw them. I felt that was good practice as well, except when I didn’t see one coming and put the bike into a slight slide hitting the back break too hard. Okay, now I know how hard too hard is. I swung in a wide circle around a flag pole right next to the All-India Radio tower and zoomed on back down the road. This time, I was prepared for each bump, and I had a grand time.

When I got back to the major road, there was a snarl in process. A bus was at the stop, a car had tried to turn behind it, the rickshaw blocking the car’s way was in the right, but trying to back away sideways to let the car through. A river of pedestrians was taking the opportunity to cross the road, the bright blues, reds, whites flowing around the red bus and mostly black and white cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws.

Well, it seems as though I was the last straw. When I pulled up, the bus pulled out. That should have cleared the way, but instead, the rickshaw drivers were staring at me, the car’s driver was grinning, the pedestrians were pausing to look, and a woman in the back of a rickshaw almost fell out trying to see me better. The rickshaw was making a right turn off the main road, so they were stuck at an angle just in front of me. She was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and she was smiling at me as though I was the best thing in her life.

I think I’ve inadvertently been in the closet on this blog. I like women. I like them in, you know, that way. Though I put away the idea of flirting when we came to India (just what I need, another set of miscues to confuse me!), I’ve been getting these smiles. The smiles I get from the women here in India say to me “I am interested in you,” “I would like to know more about you,” and “how fascinating!” These are looks and smiles I’m used to interpreting as flirtatious. So, as a person who likes to flirt with other women, who is open to the idea of taking things beyond flirting…it’s quite the tease.

So yeah, there I was, the most beautiful woman in the world smiling at me as though she’d like to take me home and figure me out, as though she admired me and wanted to get to know me better. It knocked my socks off, and it took a couple of horns honking as the traffic mess sorted itself out before I remembered that she was probably not flirting. Sigh. Oh well.

They drove off, heading past me, and I nodded to her wave. When I turned my head back, there was a group of about ten women all staring at me in the same way! Three or four generations of women, all lovely in some way. I felt special, dangerous, and influential, just sitting on a motorcycle at that intersection. The men were amazed but the women - right at that moment, they all loved me.

I bounce back and forth like that whenever James and I wander out of our writing room. Sometimes, I feel like the funniest thing ever. When I’m trying to eat and I suspect I’m not doing it right. When my opinion of the hacking in the butcher shop shows in my face. When my dupatta won’t stay put no matter how firmly I hold it. And sometimes I feel like a rock star. Children point and laugh, they run to us to ask us how we’re doing. They smile with their whole bodies. Did I do that? Did I inspire that happiness and excitement? Women look at me as though my happiness is a compliment to them. Whew.

What will it feel like to go to another place, to go back to the US or to a place where I can pass as a local? Will I feel invisible? Will I be saddened and will my happiness fade? I am generally a happy person, but I never - never - walk down the street here for long with a frown on my face.

Our usual lunch guys did us an accidental favor.

When the flood happened, around the 20th, they closed down.  I assumed it had something to do with the unsanitary nature of serving food while ankle deep in ditch water, but I was wrong.  Turns out that they close down for a few weeks every year at this time.

Thrown on our own resources, we wouldn’t have starved, but we wouldn’t have been very happy either.  Rather than eat our own cooking for lunch and dinner, we rode the motorcycle into Thampanoor pretty much every day for lunch.  This sucked a bit for two reasons: 1) It’s a little ways off and poor James had to go from deep in the story he’s writing to ultra-aware of the traffic.  2) The places in Thampanoor are roughly twice as expensive as we’ve gotten used to paying.

So Saturday came and the power went out.  It went out at about 9:30 and was still out at 11:30 when we lost patience for waiting to be able to work.  To distract us, I suggested that we take action - do something that I’d been thinking about for a while.  We know our main street pretty well, but Trivandrum (like much of India) is busy everywhere, not just on the main drags.  So we thought we’d go exploring.

My ulterior motive in selecting a direction was simple.  I wanted to find a veg-only restaurant within walking distance of the house.

Six months ago, there were no vegetarian restaurants within an hour drive.  A year ago, the closest vegetarian restaurant was a raw food place that served tasty but heavy food.  And we just made our options work for us at any restaurant that sounded good.

In India, we’ve eaten at few restaurants that also serve meat.  It’s safer to look for “Veg Only” or “Pure Veg” on the building than to try to communicate in our non-existant Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, etc, etc, etc.  When we have ended up in meat-serving restaurants (like the one we’d been eating lunch at), veg was one word the server usually understood.  But we have also been tossed out on our ears.  Okay - we left, but it kind of felt like tossed out when they informed us that there were no veg options.  Mutton biriyani.  No thanks.

So where does one find vegetarian food in a mostly Muslim neighborhood?  Well, I was hoping we’d find it near a temple.

I’d read about one called the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple.  It’s in the Guiness Book of World Records.  No really.

It’s dedicated to the goddess Bhagavathy, who is the Supreme Mother.  She is an incarnation of Vishnu who annihilates evil and protects the good in the world.  Refreshing for a person raise with soft females gods like Mary, she is depicted with four arms, each of which holds a weapon.  There’s another story about a woman named Kannaki.  I can’t figure out how that one fits in.  Can anyone enlighten me?

We walked first to the grocery store, being as though I thought I remembered it being near there (and we needed groceries).  Sure enough, they pointed us up the side street right next to them, saying, “Go straight!”

This being India, that meant go straight until the road curves left, then right, then ends in a brick wall.  Then you go straight on the nearest road to the right.  Then go right.  Um.  I think that was it.

We found the temple, no problem.  Well, first we found a smaller temple and I was surprised that it hosted such festivals as I’d read about.  Then some young boys got us turned back around and we made it to this one.

Sure enough, there are two vegetarian restaurants right there in front of the gate.  Yippee!

We’ve been back there every day since then.  (Four days now.)  They’ve gotten used to us already, sort of.  And our server has asked us to come to his home and visit.  Since he lives about 3km from Neyyar Dam, which we still haven’t found, we thought that sounded lovely.

So we get some of the best food we’ve had in India and we get to finally see Neyyar Dam!

Also, the restaurant we like - called Hotel Abhirami, though they have no rooms - is full of really great people.  They are pleasant and interesting and helpful and enthusiastic, which is a welcome change from the somewhat endearing, crotchety, grumpy, taciturn guys at Hotel Medina right here.  It’s worth the walk, for sure.

Besides, did I mention how good the food is?  We get a ridiculous pile of rice, dal, sambar, rasam, theeyal, aviyal, and something that the server called buttersauce but seems like coconut and pineapple with mad spices.  Yum.

And while we eat, there’s music from the temple.  We could barely hear it today, but yesterday it was broadcast to the whole neighborhood.  On Saturday, when we first visited, we had the amazing luck of showing up as they were playing and we recorded almost four minutes.

Click here for the Temple Music.

If this is a regular day, what are the festivals like?

The big festival is the Pongala Mahotsavam.  This is what their website says about this festival: “The entire area of about 5 kilometre radius around temple with premises of houses of people of all caste, creed and religion, open fields, roads, commercial institutions, premises of Government offices etc. emerges as a consecrated ground for observing Pongala rituals for lakhs of women devotees assembling from different parts of Kerala and outside. The ceremony is exclusively confined to women folk and the enormous crowd, which gathers in Thiruvananthapuram on this auspicious day is reminiscent of the Kumbhamela Festival of North India. ”

Wondering about that world record?

Here it is:

I have never been so unwilling to be mistaken for a Christian. It’s been a long time now since I claimed that belief system, and I’ve gotten used to the subtle and blatant ways of cluing the people around me into the fact that I’m not a believer.

But here, wow. I didn’t even realize it was happening. All this time in India, throughout North India, all the way down to Trivandrum and back up to Cochi. It wasn’t until we stopped and met some fishers on the beach at the mouth of the river that runs nearby that I realized what was happening. It had even happened before, but I hadn’t recognized it.

They thought we were one of them! They - these guys - were Christians, Keralan Christians. The whole way they came up to us and spoke with us and urged us to go out drinking with them and asked to come to our house…it was all so intimate. It was as though we were supposed to know them already.

And it was all based on a fallacy. Finally, one of the boys mentioned being Christian and we clarified that we were not. What are you?

What are we? In India, being non-religious seems to be the only really strange thing to be. There are religious systems in India, ancient and unique systems, that have fewer than 200,000 adherents worldwide. There are Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Jews, and of course, Christians. Being as though Goa was ruled by Portugal from 1510 until 1961, it shouldn’t be surprising that there would be so many Christians…but it was.

About 75% of the Christians in India live in South India. A Syrian Christian named Thomas Cana, a merchant, arrived in the 4th Century. He had 400 families in tow. That’s a good sized town, so I’m sure they spread out a bit. I don’t know much about the Syrian branch of Christianity, but if they run true to form, they got right down to the work of spreading their religion throughout the area. The Catholics were next with the Portuguese, but the English, Dutch, and Danish all brought their versions of Protestantism.

So what does all this matter, since it has nothing to do with me?

Well, apparently, it does involve me. It sucks me in and assumes my interest, complicity, involvement.

What are we? In India, churches are being burned and people are dying over religion.

The Hindu groups organizing these violent acts claim things like:

• Hundreds of churches are being built and staffed in areas with no Christian population.
• The Christian missionaries make unreasonable promises and target the poorest, most vulnerable Hindus for conversion.
• Modern-day Indian Christianity is largely a result of old-time forced conversions.
• Christian missionaries hand out pamphlets denouncing Hinduism, the Hindu gods, and promising horrible things for those who don’t convert.
• Missionaries stage seeming miracles, contrasting supposed ineffectiveness of calling on old gods with the supposed effectiveness of Jesus. These are frauds such as: giving placebos in the name of the old god and then real medicine in the name of Jesus, setting afire a bronze cross and a paper mache or wood idol of the old god.

Sounds like par for the course to me. Christianity claims to be a gentle religion, but it is the gentleness of assurance and perseverance. I wish that the Hindus would focus on education efforts - at this point in history there aren’t very many (note that I refrain from claiming none) conversions at gun- or knifepoint. But the kind of education that arms a hungry person against someone who wants to trade words for food…that education is not very useful to any religious group who is interested in poaching souls (or reconverting, I mean).

I know a lot of people who will disagree with me on this. I hope that you read this and understand my point of view, even if you can’t share it.

How can a Hindu leader hold his people close and keep them safe from the ravages of Christianity? Not with clear-headed education on the subject of religion. Not with scope and scale on the history of human belief systems that put the minor differences into perspective. Not with a self-reflective and self-critical eye that exposes the defects in Christianity and in Hinduism. Not with exposure of the tricks and systems of manipulation the Christians will use in order to convert you. Because once one turns that eye to religion, one sees that all religions have strange and fanciful histories, that all religions work on a level of faith that cannot be explained away or explained at all. The Jesuits have been torturing themselves (and others) for centuries in their attempt at using that eye on their religion. But faith is a stronger emotional experience than it is a rational experience, and transferring that emotion is not as hard as actually convincing a person that their ideas are incorrect and that yours are correct. Or that praying to Ram achieves real miracles while praying to Jesus does not. To disprove through rational means the efficacy of praying to Jesus, a leader will be leaving his own religion open to that same rational means of examination. What religion can be proven out on those terms?

How does a religion woo practitioners? The easiest way is to buy them. Christian missionaries targeting the poorest low-caste Hindus is a perfect example of this. “There’s no reason for you to go hungry tonight. Come to the church, we will feed you.” This conversation happens every day in churches all over India. If you are hungry, sooner or later you will want to eat. Eating their food is opening yourself to admitting that they are doing good, that they are good. In Orissa, there are people telling tales of actual cash payments - monthly stipends - for coming to church regularly.

Hinduism does not have practice in buying converts. It has been embedded in India for so long that it isn’t used to making itself look good to outsiders for the purposes of conversion. Hinduism wasn’t even a named and organized religion until the British arrived with their measuring sticks and notebooks and decided on something to call this set of practices and beliefs. It was simply the way of life, and as such it was free to stratify clearly, to separate people by types of work done and then assign values to each type of work. And of course, by skin color. That bias is stronger in India than I’d realized.

So in Orissa, the anti-Christian Hindu organizations have begun to emphasize the benefits of being Hindu. If you were low-caste before you converted, you gave up a status in the legal realm that gave you access to reservations, the Indian version of Affirmative Action (and predating it by quite a bit, being as though the first reservation system was put into effect in 1935). They organize to help feed, clothe, and house reconverted Hindus.

Is this better? Well, I’m always glad to see a community begin to take care of itself…meaning the money spread a little more equitably. But it doesn’t change the fundamental societal weaknesses that leave people ripe for conversion: poverty, hunger, illness, ignorance, and lack of options.

What are we?

We are people with no god. I would think that would leave us without a side in this issue, but I’m finding that atheism is also present in India. We do not turn “Atheism” into a religion, as many people do, with their own sort of proselytizing and converting, so I feel little to no community emotion at the idea of there being other atheists.

We are people with respect for culture. I recognize that there are ways of dressing, cooking, and otherwise living one’s life that are comfortable, make one happy, and fulfill human needs for community. Beside, the different ways people live make for a better, more interesting, more adaptive world…when those people are willing to adapt. One of the problems I have with religion is the fierce consequences for change and adaptation. In a world where outrageous resources are needed to bring meat from fertilization to table, holding onto one’s meat-eating habits in order to differentiate oneself from one’s neighbors is counter-adaptive. (Yeah, I know. The reasons for eating meat are many, but I’ve never heard any but culture, habit, or inertia that I could really understand.)

We are people with no community. This may sound megalomaniacal (it feels vaguely hubrisish just writing it), but there are no people like us. We are able to take part in bits and pieces of rite and ritual from a collection of communities: travelers, sailors, writers, cyclers, tech geeks, vegetarians, sexual activists, non-breeders; but we do not shape our behavior to ensure continued membership in any of these. So we are not tied to any community traits and we are therefore more flexible in integrating what we like about cultures we meet and get to know.

So why, of all of the assumptions being made about me daily, does the assumption of Christianity bother me?

It must be discomfort with some corollary assumptions I’m assuming they’re making. And that brings up my own assumptions about Christianity. It’s uncomfortable to think about, because I’ve been so sure that I disagreed with the ideas of Christians but that I did so rationally and clearheadedly.

Over the last few days, as I’ve slowly eeked this post out, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’ve been realizing that I have more negative feeling for Christianity than for any other category of belief. Not as much as for ways that people act or think, like fanaticism, intolerance, violence, and so on. But as far as straight up in-your-face disagreeing, it’s Christianity that inflates my balloon.

Thinking about my anti-Christianity bias, I come to several conclusions.

1. As someone who leans toward the empiricist view, I most believe and feel strongly about those things I have personal experience with. (Though even Locke argued that God was an exception to empiricism. Sigh.) My overwhelming experience with religion has been with Christianity. Therefore, my strongest feelings and deepest held beliefs will be about Christianity rather than another religion.
2. There are qualities and characteristics I abhor having attributed to me. Some of those qualities are fanaticism, irrationality, proselytizing, condescension, close-mindedness. I attribute all of these to Christianity in general. These are qualities which are very common in the practitioners of Christianity.
3. I have a degree of prejudice against Christians that would shame me were it any other group on the planet. Does it shame me? Some. But I also have many bad experiences with Christians that I can base my prejudging on. It’s like, how many frogs have you seen? How many of them were some shade of green? Is it fair to assume that most frogs are green? Yes, if you’ve seen a lot of frogs from different places with different backgrounds living different kinds of life. (We have little frogs who invade our kitchen to eat bugs.)
4. I probably have many of the assumptions wrong. I bet there are prejudices in Indian people toward Christians that I never even thought of. So I need to say about this the same thing I say about the other assumptions people make about me. So be it.

In all the (more and more secular) world, India is a place where religion is an issue, where religion is a major part of the public as well as the private lives of the citizenry. I know that there are many places we could go where most of the people we met wouldn’t wonder about our religious beliefs. But we’re in India and we will continue to confound expectations at every turn. I’ve begun learning Malayalam, so I hope to get a basic vocabulary with which I can shock people on the basis of language. I don’t have unlimited funds (though I do have some nifty toys and it’s true that I have more resources than many people). We’re pretty familiar with the range of veg food served around here, so our ordering and eating is pretty smooth. And wow - I have no god.

P.S. You’ve all tended to send me emails about my posts - I’d be interested in getting you to comment instead so that there could perhaps be a discussion.  I definitely want to know what you think about all this.

There is etiquette and the rules. There is also non-verbal communication, the cues that are below conscious interpretation most of the time. If you find yourself studying someone’s posture, expression, hand motions for meaning, for clues about the meaning behind their words, you are looking for the non-verbal communication. For many people, reading these cues is automatic and happens unaware. This happened to you when you realized that your cousin wished you would leave though she invited you to stay for dinner. This happened to you when you said no to a second cup of tea when your hostess offered one, though you didn’t realize that she was actually out of milk.

As we have met more and more people here, I’ve been more and more conscious of my illiteracy. I wander around this country unable to read many of the signs and advertisements. Some of them are in English, but many are in the language of the state. Similarly, I have been more conscious of my non-verbal illiteracy. I am not sure of my reading of people’s cues, the things they say without saying them, the delicate and important business of being honest while protecting their images of themselves as good hosts and nice people. I have had so many things pushed on me with great force: food, drinks, chairs, extra servings. And I’m not fluent enough to know when I please the host by acquiescing and when I displease them. Even more difficult, when I persist in declining the offers (too full for more, tired of sitting, etc), am I making things difficult or easy? I worry about putting people out. When I’m offered chai and I say yes, someone has to go make it. It’s not the fastest process on earth, either…

Imagine a woman in a room of old-fashioned men, who would not dream of sitting while she stands. She walks in, makes everyone’s acquaintance, wanders to stand by the mantelpieces, declines a chair. She doesn’t know that she’s forcing all of these tired men to stand or that she could ask them to please sit. Their corns are hurting, their hips are aching. She will come to recognize that she is making them uncomfortable.

I don’t want to be that person. I wish there was a way to step outside the social faces and get across to someone in all honesty - you will have to tell me exactly what you mean. You will have to say that I can have tea but that you don’t really feel like making it. You will have to tell me that if I continue to sit and chat, that you will ask me to stay to dinner, but that you don’t have enough food for an extra mouth. Or contrariwise that you wish I would take more food because it is a great pleasure to you to feed people until they can hardly roll away from the table. That you want some chai and if I refuse, you will feel rude in leaving me to go make some.

And then there’s the mirror image of that problem. I am, of course, communicating the whole time as well. I have become nervous also about inadvertently insulting someone or otherwise coming across wrong. It has made me think about how careful I am to communicate to my own purposes - verbally and non-verbally. Shaping my behavior to…not to expectations, but to communication. The smiles that mean so much more than “I’m happy”, saying also I feel that you have welcomed me properly, that I am happy to be in your home, that I like your furniture/clothing/hairstyle. The tilting headshake that means no, but also it’s not that I didn’t like it I just don’t want more and don’t put yourself to any bother.

This sojourn among body-languages foreign might help me learn to “be myself” in a way, figuring out which behaviors are mine and which are for expediency’s sake. There is performance of self always, but it is so transparent in these foreign situations that it accidentally becomes an exploration of who I believe myself to be and how I want to relate to people.

• I am a person who smiles a lot.
• I am a person who enjoys food and drink.
• I am a person who loves music.
• I am a person who likes you.

But what if I don’t like you. Hmm. I haven’t practiced that one much.

As a teenager, I made a list once. It was a list of what I was and what I wasn’t. It was the first time I tried to categorize myself so determinedly. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started using the phrase “I am the kind of person who…” with any degree of assurance and ease. But I was also in the culture I’d been trained to. I didn’t need to say these things aloud - I could usually express them another way.

Here, I feel like I’m the same person, but I get to reevaluate my behavior to find out how I can express that person best. For example, I will wear clothes that are considered relatively modest. That means something different here than in the US, but I have usually dressed fairly modestly for my surroundings. Another example. I am open to trying new things. In the US, it was pretty easy to be that person - I was rarely left behind by others forging ahead into the unknown. Here I have a different challenge. I am perceived to be foreign. That means that people will assume that everything is new to me. Even if I’ve tried something before and know how I feel about it, I think people will judge my willingness rather than my taste if I refuse something. It is one of the big reasons I want to learn Malayalam. I want to be able to communicate (semi-nonverbally…grin) that I am familiar with this place.

Another example, the barbell in my tongue is quite the rockstar. The tattoo on the back of my neck is also. These are signs to people, signs of who I am, the choices I’ve made. For me, it is accurate communication. It tells a truth. What does it tell people here? It seems to be a part of my foreignness. When I want greater privacy, when I choose non-verbal silence, I can leave my hair down and laugh less boisterously, with my mouth less open.

Yesterday, a man invited us to his house for lunch. James accepted conditionally, explaining that we do not eat meat, so we could eat before we came and just visit. He insisted that it was not a problem, that his wife would cook vegetables for us. When we arrived, we found a Muslim household where the wife who cooked such wonderful food for us did not eat with us. We were served at the dining table by the husband and the two children. She did not want to show her face. Even to me.

I can’t claim to know anything beyond the most basic of things about Muslim beliefs, but I thought that a woman could show herself to other women. In this visit, I was more foreigner than I was female. I had no idea how to make her more comfortable or if I should even try. Did I set myself apart by coming to her house with my head uncovered and eating with her husband along with my own? If I had moved straight into the kitchen and stayed there, would we have had a nice visit of our own? I cannot know. If I knew some Malayalam, I might have tried to spend time with her. Tried to figure out how to make her comfortable, how to give her what she wanted from a guest.

But I might not have. I have never been fond of the social dynamic that splits a group by gender. I feel that there is something expected of me in those situations that I cannot give. Even more with this situation, I don’t think I could have made her comfortable. I would have joined my husband for lunch and she might have felt even more pressure to be immodest, to show herself to him and eat in front of him. Or not. I just don’t know…

We finished everything we were served, though it was more food than I wanted. I think it was the right thing to do. It was the impression I got - that it was my job to eat until it was gone.

Bah, etiquette. I will learn Malayalam. I will tell people, though it may strain their comfort, that I am stupid in their ways and that they must guide me. And I will continue to be myself. I will be myself to myself first. I will communicate myself to other people second. And yes, sometimes I will eat that pickle again, though I know I didn’t like it much the first time. Because of all the things I want people to see are true of me, a desire to be flexible and learn the Keralan ways is the most important.

No, really.

Here’s how it works.

Put the clothes in the side with the big bin.  Turn the water faucet on.

Once there’s enough water, turn the water off.  Add soap.  Set the timer for the agitator.

When the timer goes off, click over to “Drain” to, you know, drain. Click back and refill.  Reset timer.
When rinsing is complete, move clothes to the other side - the spinner.  Turn on that timer and hold onto the thing while it bumps a few times until it evens out.

Put the clean, semi-dry laundry on the clothesline on the roof.

It’s pretty satisfying, actually.  I was dubious while shopping, but I’m glad we didn’t pay double for a fully automatic version.  We’re cleaner and better smelling than we have been since we arrived! I’ll have James take a picture…

Today we went to the beach. Name of the beach? Hmm. I just don’t know.

We decided to just head out and try to find it. Looking at the google satellite view of the area (a while back), I thought there seemed to be a relatively straightforward route. But the roads that the maps choose to mark don’t necessarily look any different from other roads. Like in Seattle - sometimes a road will be marked Arterial, which I would think means it’s a more major road than the others around it. But you can’t always tell the difference without the little signs.

Here there are no signs. James and I both thought we remembered a through road that left from the school, so we turned left out of the lane and then left again after the school. We found the first thing we were looking for deep in the neighborhood lanes - a chai wallah. Yay! Deliciously caffeinated, we set off again.

We felt safe just wandering because there’s a major river that meets the sea just south of us. If we crossed any good-sized bridges, we had gone too far! Well, we meandered for quite some time before suddenly realizing that we were paralleling the water. James turned off at the next opportunity so that we could take a look from the edge and figure out what part of coast we were on.

What a reception we got! Boys poured out of every building around. Little boys, big boys. Boys who thought they were men and boys who hadn’t started thinking about that yet. They all said hello and all shook our hands. A few even had decent shakes!

Just so happens that we turned into a little fishing community with a…yes…a christian church. Denomination? Um, I have no idea, but there was a glowing picture of a white Jesus and a cross on top of the building. Everyone automatically assumed we were christian as well. When we said no, it didn’t compute - I could tell that the kid in charge (the one quickest to try out his english) thought he was misunderstanding us or that we were misunderstanding the situation. Oh well…

The little boys wanted “school pens”, but I’ve been going on the give-nothing rule and had no pens for them. For the first time, I wished that I did. It didn’t seem like a random “see what I can get from the rich white people” kind of request, though it was said kind of reflexively. I got the impression that it was about all they ever said in english, but I also got the impression that there was a lack of pens. A couple of the boys had sunday school books and they really looked like they needed pens to write in them! Maybe I was just feeling especially susceptible today…I don’t know…

James amused the small ones by letting them try on his sunglasses and getting them to make badass faces. Their “mean” looks were great - mostly cute with a couple of bullies that were too good at it. Heh.

While James and the little boys played around, I talked to the older boys. They were very indulgent with the little ones, laughing at their funny faces and telling me that James was a good man for playing with them. They asked me all kinds of questions about where I was from, why I was here, etc, etc. I admitted that I knew no Malayalam and, once again, was nicely, politely, curiously (though it felt accusing to me) asked why I came to a place where Malayalam was spoken but didn’t make any effort to learn. I’m sure I blushed. I tried to redeem myself by telling them that we went to the north part of India first and that I had learned a little Hindi in order to get by up there. But that we liked Trivandrum better and so now I have some Hindi in an area that speaks no Hindi, by conscious, stubborn design.

In the language wars of India, the southern parts that speak Malayalam and Tamil (and others I’m sure) fight the assumed hegemony of Hindi by pushing for English as the officially recognized second language of every state, leaving each state their own language as first. They would rather (and I see their point) learn their own language at home then English at school to aid them in business, law, and general communication since it’s more international than Hindi. The people pushing Hindi are usually native Hindi speakers who claim they want to get rid of the last major vestige of British rule.

Anyway, speaking Hindi wins me no points here, and I don’t actually speak it anyway. Just a tiny bit.

So after a little while, I decided I wanted to leave. I did get some good information out of the guys - we were about halfway between Valiyathura and Kovalam…What?!? I thought Kovalam was farther away!

And it is, by road. On the water, you can see one from the other - hardly any distance at all. But we could also see that we hadn’t yet passed the river, and that’s where we were headed.

After a bunch more slow riding through narrow lanes, staying along the water, we reached a place from which we could see the narrow strip of land that separated the sea from one fork of the river. The river splits in two just before the sea, going around a piece of land and turning it into an island - though there are places from which you can walk one side to another. We could see the peninsula formed by this river and the sea, but there were houses and a bunch of guys staring at us. We figured we could probably walk there from where we were, but it didn’t feel quite comfortable.

So we backtracked, taking a different fork in the road when we got back to a three-way “intersection”. I put that in quotes only because, while it fits the official definition of the word just fine, it’s not what I imagine you imagining when you hear it…

Well, we crossed the river. I started feeling a bit cross because we seemed to make so many trips to the water without actually getting to swim.

Very soon, we saw a large bridge. It was a steep upsidedown U, though the river was not very wide. We stopped across from it and discussed it for a moment. Sure, it goes to the island. Sure, it looks like it can hold a motorcycle. I pantomimed “can we go across” to an old man sitting with a bicycle next to the bridge and he waved us on. Okay then - over we go!

There was a miniature town just on the other side - a couple of stores and some people milling about - and then just homes, palm trees, and fern-like shrubbery. Oh - now bananas and coconuts, mangoes and jackfruit…

We drove slowly for a while, but the bike was heating up (air-cooled) and we were both itching to explore. We pulled off the road into a bit of a hidden parking area. Sure enough - it was too good to be made up by us…because there were a few logs creating steps up the small hill and then a shrine of some sort. A couple more flat rocks with circles of flowers on them and we began to get the picture. In a country of cremation, we’d stumbled into a cemetery.

Weird.

And of course, people often have a “thing” about their dead. So how likely were we to insult someone by walking through to the…is that?…yes…a gorgeous, palm-shaded, blue-watered beach!

We did it. We walked through the graveyard and over a very strange palm walkway to the beach. I guess it is only an island during monsoon. Today, we had an easy walk across a hummock of land created by topsoil conserving qualities in the root structures of a line of palm trees.

I wandered south, trying to avoid the areas where there were a bunch of people. I was a bit shy of disrobing to swim among a bunch of fisherman - it’s not their way for women to get so exposed in public. When women do swim in the sea, they often do so in their saris…which I just can’t imagine.

James, however, walked right out there and quickly became the focus for a magically growing group of young men - ages 17 to 24, we were to find out - who were all fishermen. They told him about the difficulty of catching fish when the big ships come close to shore and sweep huge numbers from the water. They told him that they were forced to fish closer to land and that the fish they catch are small and hard to sell. And of course, though they didn’t say this, the more they catch them when they’re small, the fewer fish are left to grow older and repopulate the deeper areas.

Sigh.

But once I gave up and joined the boys, we had only talked a little while when the group’s unofficial leader asked us if we wanted to swim. We, of course, said yes, and I figured that this group of guys wasn’t going to be offended by my one-piece swimsuited body. So we stripped along with the leader and another guy and went for a swim.

Wow - those waves were powerful! They didn’t look that big on the shore, and they didn’t look that big when they were on me, but damn, did they shove me around!

The guys lured us out beyond the breakers and it was so lovely out there, bobbing in the super-buoyant salt water. I just waited a minute for the relaxation to set it, then I looked around. James wasn’t nearby, and I could see that he was still in the surf. By the time he got out to us, he was saying that he needed sunscreen and I groaned. Oh man - the fishers had distracted me and neither James nor I had any sunscreen on whatsoever. It’s a sure and painful burn that results from saltwater + sunshine, so we slogged our way back out of the water and slathered on the sunscreen and stood for a few minutes giving the stuff time to dry into our skin a bit before going back out.

We only ended up swimming for a very short period of time, but it felt great.

Getting dressed again was an athletic exercise in modesty. I went behind a fishing boat, but the guys didn’t get the point that I wanted privacy. I did the arms out, shirt on, suit to waist, wrap around waist, suit off, dry under wrap, pants on, wrap off routine. But with a salwar kameez, it’s much easier than with jeans…

The only thing I couldn’t get on subtly was my bra, so I squeezed with my elbows every time we went over a bump from there on - and these are Indian roads we’re talking about…

That left us hungry and thirsty, and we wandered the coastal roads for another 15 or 20 minutes before we found a hotel. Meaning a place that serves food, not a place that rents bedrooms. It’s a thing. I don’t know why, though I think it’s probably a British remnant.

We stopped at a random place, walked in and sat, poured ourselves water from the pitcher on the table, and proceeded to have our usual conversation. Meal, veg only. No, no chicken, no mutton. Veg only. Yes, veg. Great!

And it was. We ate a ton, the two men running the place refilling James on the rice, dal, vegetable curry, and lemon pickle and refilling me on the vegetable curry before I could signal no-thanks. I didn’t eat all my food, but James did! It was a total of 60 rupees (or about $1.30) and did I ever enjoy it!

After that, we just headed home. Of course, that was exciting too, because we surely couldn’t have retraced our route. We headed off the direction I suspected we should go and just winged it. We went farther east than the house so that when we got on Kovalam Road, we had to come back a short ways, but hey - I think we’re going great!

Loving it. Oh yeah.

And on a side note - James had done a bunch more writing (he’s writing now or I’d ask him how many pages he has) and so have I. I’ve added another six pages by putting a little here and a little there to fix it up…

I’m so happy!

We’re going to head to Anandalakshmy because we don’t have internet at the house yet. We’ll go over there about 7pm, since that’s when the power goes out (for a half hour). Next week it’ll be 7:30, then 8pm…that reminds me - we need to get a lantern!

India is a short-term home for me.

I feel more at home all the time. It’s not my country, of course, and it’s obvious at a glance that we’re foreigners. Though I know that my whiteness will never go away, as we frequent the same restaurant and shops, people become inured to us. It’s getting more comfortable. I’m glad I lived in Hawaii first, because there’s stuff about geckos and cockroaches that I experienced in Hawaii that India can’t touch (or just hasn’t yet). I’m not scared of this place - haven’t been - but I can see where some people would have a harder time.

Still, I do not picture myself extending my visa indefinitely or seeking citizenship. And it has nothing to do with the people, the government, the land…

I had the abrupt and slightly sad realization that India would not be my final home in Jew Town, Cochi. We were staying in Ernakulam and we’d taken a ferry over to Cochi. We walked around for a while but weren’t impressed by the hawkers and pushy autorickshaw drivers. We took a rickshaw, though, from Cochi to Mattancherry to see the palace. Underwhelmed by the palace (where, admittedly, they were working on the displays), we decided just to go back to the room and shower again (and again, and again).

We walked from the palace toward the water and got caught up in the Jew Town bazaar. So many spices, so much perfume…the smell changed by small degrees every step we took and each change was just more to love. It didn’t look like much on a weekend, but it had such olifactory presence that we didn’t feel we were missing anything.

As we walked along, we came to a sign. On our right was the Malabar Yacht Club. We goggled at the sign for only a moment before pushing open the gate, feeling as though it was the gate to our real home…

And beyond that gate? Two sailboats and a powerboat on the hard and one sailboat on a rickety pier.

I deflated. Not just a sigh. Not just a minor disappointment.

Cochi was supposed to be the only real boat harbor south of Mumbai, but where, oh where were the boats? If this was the main port for sailors on this coast…oh sadness!

I followed James out to greedily look over the boats, to salve my eyes on the sheets, the shrouds, the masts and booms and rudders and…and…and…

And it wasn’t enough. If this is the best that India has to offer a sailor, I’m sorry, but I’m a short-termer here.

I’m dedicated to getting these books finished and we’ve invested everything we have into this trip so that we’ll be sure to produce. But the long-term plan is, has always been, to get back on the water. To get enough money or to find a ridiculously good deal or to just take a boat someone can’t maintain anymore. But definitely, always, to be sailors.

We are sailors. Don’t doubt that just because we are currently boatless. I know this about myself, and if there is something strange about a sailor who sells her boat, not knowing where/when/how the next one will come…well, just know that I believe in my own abilities to make things happen.

But not here. And that makes me sad. I’ve been so pleased with India. There was a scrap of an idea, an idea of sailing the Med and the Indian Ocean and the Pacific from a base in India. But India is not a sailor’s paradise.

So I’ll get everything I can from this year and when I leave, I’ll do it knowing that I probably won’t be back. If I do come back, it probably won’t be to live. And if I do live here, I’d better be rich, because the only real marina is in Mumbai and I have no idea what it takes to get in there!

I’m so glad we’re here now. This could be the last time in my life that I travel significant distances on land. It makes me think…where else can’t I sail to?

Here’s a google map on our exact coordinates:

We’ve begun our work. Yesterday, for the first time, James and I sat down at our desks in our shared office and we worked on our books. James produced several pages of new work and I did a careful read of the first 80-some pages of Blue Water Dreams. I also made notes on a bunch of the things I want to add to give the book depth.

I started this book at the most shallow of levels, and I’ve been struggling ever since. In order to give myself a structure and some plain goals, I made an outline of the elements of a good romantic novel. I then took those elements and made an outline of my story as it fits the elements, calling each major element a chapter. Next, I wrote a one-page abstract of all of the things that would happen in each chapter.

At that point, I had a map. All of this was in a notebook, handwritten, and I decided that I could simply write the book from the beginning by moving from page to page through the abstract.

Whoa.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It started the way I had intended. I wrote 23 single-spaced pages on June 7, 2005. But then I didn’t write much more for a long time. I edited those pages until January, only adding another dozen pages in all that time. By March of 2006, I still only had 50 pages. In April, I reached 85. And more than a year later, on July 8, 2006, I broke 100 pages and finished the story. What? A hundred pages long? That’s not a book!

Of course, in that time I also got a promotion at work that meant I worked long hours, sailed all around the San Francisco Bay, and prepared for our long, wonderous sail from San Francisco to Hilo, Hawaii. Mostly, I worked at Babeland and worked on getting the boat ready. I couldn’t give the book the attention it deserved and that I wanted to give it. At that point in my life, I wanted to sail to Hawaii more than I wanted the book done. I got what I wanted most, but then there was the book…

In Hawaii, James got a killer job and I settled into being a kept woman. From November 11, 2006 to June of 2007, I edited and wrote. As I fleshed out the main and auxilliary characters, the book swelled to 384 pages. I printed versions and went line by line through them. I got an amazing critique from James’ friend from way-back, Ann Pai, and that changed the structure of my story quite a bit. Thanks, Ann! She started me on the process of getting rid of the genre-fiction limitations on the book.

From then, we moved from the Island of Hawaii to Honolulu on Oahu. Suddenly, life was harder and more demanding again. I didn’t work on the book for a very long time. Literally. The next version of the book is dated December 5, 2007. That was in Berkeley, a strange story of its own. And again, nothing until April 4, 2008. Again, nothing until…

Now.

Now I’m going to focus each day on this book. I am going to write the rest of the story and clean it up some more. I am going to email Ann Pai and see if she’d be willing to read the book again.

And then I am going to sell the fucker.