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.

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.

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:

So, on Monday the 27 of October in 2008 in Trivandrum, Kerala, India the rain just stopped, kaput! It was like someone just turned the faucet off. On Tuesday the 28th the sun came out and Dena and I hit the road on our Royal Enfield Bullet headed for the confluence of the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian Ocean to the south and the Bay of Bengal to the east, the sangam of the three great bodies of water that feed the Indian Subcontinent.

The two of us will use pretty much any reason to just up-n-travel but this time, being our tenth wedding anniversary, the official end of the North East Monsoon and of course the Indian Festival of Light, Diwali, we had our reasons stacked up like a Dravidian temple so off to Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, India we went!

We packed light because Dena has to carry the bulk of our load alone on her back while I drive. Two changes of light clothes each, our swimming gear, some water, our travel logs, books and that’s about it. I carried my camera bag around my neck and shoulder and rested it on the gas tank as I drove comfortably enough. Although the roads are riddled with treacherous pot holes the Bullet with two people weighing it down is a pretty stable and slow ride so we took our sweet time and stopped where ever we saw fit to shake off the road and shoot a photo or two. It was a beautiful 80km drive through some breathtaking country side.

Unlike most of the U.S. when you go from state to state in India you are going into another culture and language altogether. Tamil Nadu is no exception to that rule and we quickly found that out when we stopped for our first meal in Kuzhittura just across the border from Kerala. We ordered (what we thought was) our standard fare, two veg-thali meals but the guy taking our order either didn’t believe that’s what we wanted or just misunderstood because what we got was a kind of fried rice thing with some stuff glopped on top of it, it was bad, really bad so we ate what we could, smiled the best we could, said our namaste’s and got the hell out of that place and hit the road again. We stopped a few more times before reaching Kanyakumari because Tamil Nadu has some truly amazing mountains and some of the most unbelievable flowing landscape one could ever lay eyes on, it was an incredible drive!

We got to lands-end at Kanyakumari (or as the English called it, Cape Comorin) at about 4:00 in the afternoon and wasted no time getting a room and setting out on foot for that blue oceans sangam and of course it was everything we were hoping it would be. The rocks leading away from the beautiful white sandy beach were littered with people jockeying for the perfect sunset position and although Kanyakumari is obviously a tourist city every one seemed to be in high spirits in anticipation of the coming dusk.

We walked ourselves raw, found a fantastic old observation tower, watched the show and headed back to our room for some photo editing and some good old fashioned R&R…

Now, Dena and I really do like to park the bike and set out on foot as much as we can so the next morning after an Idly, Sambar, and Chai Breakfast we went on a short bike ride to a little town on a perfectly crescent beach called Culachal. We stripped down to our swim gear and bathed our bodies in the warm Arabian Sea then took off out the jetty for some photos and some drying time.

It is very important to note that if you have white skin and go to a little town in India you have to expect to be heavily stared at, at all times and approached by at least three or four people wanting to know your bees-wax. Most people are very polite for the most part but being the object of inquisition is always a bit disconcerting but a part of traveling non-the-less. As a matter of fact we believe this aspect of our travels to be one of the most important. We believe that we are American diplomats, therefore exchanging information, smiles, handshakes and stories whenever possible is essential to our adventures and will ultimately bring us closer to our global community.

We left the beach at Culachal and went back to the city of Kanyakumari for a huge thali meal at a local hotel and found out that we weren’t in that different of a place, we were just in the wrong restaurant back in Kuzhittura is all. A 14 inch stainless steel plate piled high with as much rice and curries as you can put down for 40 rupees , now that’s more like it!

We took the ferry to the Vivekananda Rock Memorial (the farthest point south in India), shot the obligatory pictures of the tourist stuff but discovered while out there a huge wind power generating plant to the East of the rock and dedicated ourselves to finding out more about it and getting as close as we could get to some of the generators! So we got back to our room showered, jumped on the Bullet and headed East…

What we discovered was a huge wind farm consisting of about 200 generators spread out over about 100 square kilometers in a very rural part of Tamil Nadu. We shot a bunch of pictures of the generators that most people that approached us didn’t even see anymore and ended up going to a beautiful little fishing town of about 1000 people called Chettikulam that we just fell in love with. We drove into town, parked the bike and were of course immediately surrounded by the about 20 kids all trying out their English on us. When we told them that we were interested in the wind-power generators they just shrugged it off as being kind of weird and went on playing around us as if we were a new aspect of a very old game. One of the older fishers of the town guided us around showing us all the good things he thought we should take pictures of, the old-timer, his boat, his kids, his friends et-cet… When we were done we made our way back to the Bullet and discovered upon our arrival a faction of the town’s matriarchy, about ten ornately sari-clad women surrounded by children. They asked us as many questions about us and what we were doing in their town as they could, mainly speaking directly to Dena. One woman wanted to see my camera as if to make sure it was what I said it was. Once the business of grilling us was over and they were all satisfied that we were harmless it was all smiles and happy goodbyes. We took off out of Chettikulam feeling an incredible high, a civilized feeling that we had just made actual contact with real people in a real place, it was wonderful, it was civilization.

We then went to a random deserted beach to watch the sun go down on the festival of light, Diwali, had another incredible meal and made our way back to our hotel.

On the way back home to Trivandrum we tried to stay on the coast as much as possible and because of that it took us all day to make a trip that could have been 80 km’s but that was really ok with us, we were traveling, together, seeing things we’d never seen before and for us that was somehow enough.

12 years ago I met Dena for our first “real” date at Louie The Blacksmiths Halloween party and we have been almost inseparable since that day, that day being October 25 1996.

Two short years after that day we called all of our friends and family together to meet us on an Island in the Puget Sound to celebrate a set of promises that we had written together for each other.

Ten years!

I never thought for a second before meeting Dena Hankins that I would be able to put up with a person for more then a decade but even more phenomenal is the fact that she has not only put up with all of my many idiosyncrasies but she in turn loves and respects me in the same way that I love, honor and respect her.
The promises that we wrote to each other and proclaimed to our family and friends a decade ago read like this;
We promised to work at loving each other.

We promised to take care of each other when we need it, to leave each other alone when we need it and to ask when we do not know which is needed.

We promised to communicate our needs to the best of our abilities.

We promised to remember that we are both individuals.

We promised to weigh each others wishes before making decisions concerning each other.

We promised to to try to know each other to the fullest extent possible in each phase of growth and change.

We promised to keep the above promises fresh and relevant and to keep our love young and new!!!

I look back over the last decade plus two that we have been together and I can clearly see that we have kept our promises to each other by simply loving and respecting each other.

…That’s easy!

Now I am ready to face the rest of our lives together, and no matter how many decades and miles we sail together as long as we keep our promises to each other we will only become stronger in our love and respect for each other!

Dena, I love you more today!

James

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.

Lania dripped sweat. Dizzy with exhilaration, she tripped on the ramp down to the fresh water of Lake Union, catching herself on the wooden two-by-four railing. Her reflection in the water laughed at her lack of grace. Her thick-muscled legs looked solid enough, but they felt like willow branches. Her fast bicycle ride to the Center for Wooden Boats from Shilshole Bay Marina had absorbed some of her pounding excitement, but the six mile ride hadn’t stopped the spinning of her head.

She glanced into the busy workshop beside the bottom of the ramp and called out an irrepressibly happy hello to the slight old man pulling curls of wood from a teak board with a hand plane. He raised his bristly chin in quiet acknowledgement. Without stopping to talk, she strode out on the dock to survey the familiar boats on display. She took deep breaths of the humid air, hungry for the tang of wet wood.

Of the twenty-seven boats owned by the Center, Lania’s quick eyes spotted almost a dozen missing. A busy Sunday at the beloved but usually quiet non-profit. The sailing season didn’t officially begin until the Opening Day ceremonies on Memorial Day, but that didn’t keep the devoted away on a rare beautiful early May afternoon.

Several of the boats were running maneuvers in the little cove, sailing students at the helm. Others were further away, in the lake proper. Each one was a work of boat-building art. The smallest boat was only nine feet long and it was just as beautiful and carefully maintained as the largest-–a forty-three foot, gaff-rigged schooner with deep layers of old varnish, lovingly applied. The warm glow of the golden varnish and the sound of little wavelets slapping the wooden dock brought a measure of calm to Lania’s spinning world.

Lania stepped from one floating pier to the next, savoring the dance, adjusting her balance as the pier dipped under her foot and then recovered. She stopped at the end of the main pier, feet spread, ready to bring her plans to fruition.

She shivered as the sweat evaporated in the spring breeze off the lake. Her eyes tracked a pre-teen sailing student who was whipping a tiny sailboat around in tight curves. Watching the child bounce from side to side as she tacked the boat, Lania felt a little envious. She’d be so much farther along if she had been introduced to boating as a child.

Her reverie was interrupted by a big deep voice booming, “She’s a sailor now!”

Lania turned with a broad smile for the gruff old man who ran the Center for Wooden Boats. She tucked a thick curl behind her ear and blushed with pleasure. “Yep–it’s official, Herman. I passed the offshore cruising class.”

“Of course you did! You’ve been a whiz with our little boats here.” He reinforced his approbation with a hearty slap on the shoulder. After months of visiting the Center on Lake Union, Lania knew Herman well enough to brace for it, and she managed to keep her feet. He laughed as she wrinkled her nose at his workman’s muscles and wind-worn face.

She looked at her scruffy tennis shoes and then up at Herman. “I never told you this,” she began. Herman raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “You’re the only person in my life who knows about the classes. I’ve never told anyone else I want to sail.”

Herman’s faded blue eyes narrowed. He considered her for a moment before asking, “Why keep sailing a secret, minnow? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, though we sailors have had a reputation for wildness.”

“I just wanted to be sure of myself. I’m going to leave all of my friends and family behind. I don’t know how they’ll take the idea, especially my dad,” Lania admitted. “It’s all I want, but I can’t help but feel it’ll sound crazy to people.”

Herman gave Lania a sharp look from under his brows. He studied her face, thinking that she looked so strong to be so vulnerable. Her face was both soft and firm–her broad forehead ending on dark, straight brows over arresting deep-water blue eyes, a chiseled Roman nose, and generous, well-defined lips. Her cheeks and chin were more softly rounded. It crossed Herman’s mind that her face gave away her true nature–a complicated blend of soft, giving femininity with uncompromising strength and determination.

Gruff in tone but gentle in volume, he replied, “Minnow, you have to do exactly what is right for you. When a body sails around the world, you meet many people. You can learn more about human beings in a circumnavigation than in any anthropology class. I’m not saying your friends aren’t important, but this big old world has more to teach than you can learn sitting around here in Seattle.”

Lania listened to his advice, but she had heard it before. She agreed but still felt a jig in her stomach at the thought of telling her parents. “You’re right. And now that I’ve graduated from the Sailing Academy, no one can say it’s too much for me.”

Herman nodded and squinted across the sun-dazzled water at the swift little boats tacking and jibing. His eyes pierced the distance from within a wealth of wrinkles. “Well, let me get back to work, child. I can’t stand around wagging my jaw all day.”

Lania put a soft hand on Herman’s hard shoulder and gave him an impulsive hug. It was Herman’s turn to flush as Lania drew away. She said simply, “Thanks. I’ll see you next weekend.”

#

When Lania had absorbed some of the peace of the water, she strolled back along the line of wooden boats. Hauling herself up the gangplank and to the lawn in the park fronting the Center, she inhaled a rich mixture of sawn wood, pine needles, and grass. A pavilion straddled the path at the entrance to the park and the rafters held a collection of Coast Salish and Nootkan-style canoes and kayaks. They were both display and advertisement, having been built by summer camp kids. Lania’s bike was locked to a large-linked old anchor chain that ran around the park in two semi-circles from the parking lot to the boating ramp.

Sitting on the cool grass in the unusually warm May sun and resting her backpack on her crossed legs, she pulled out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and nibbled in deep contentment as sailors shouted and water slapped the pilings.

She finished her sandwich and brushed the crumbs from her fingers. Stifling a groan, she set her backpack to the side and straightened her legs to stretch. The bike ride from the Shilshole Bay Marina had taken its toll on her. She had ridden on the Burke-Gilman Trail much of the way, passing other riders and getting passed in equal measure. The other bikers on the trail rode ultra-light road bikes and dressed in fancy leggings and tight tops in bright colors, emblazoned with the names of their expensive bikes. Their flashy outfits provided an unflattering contrast to her riding uniform–a t-shirt and dark grey sweatpants with the ankles pulled up to her knees. Lania was not interested in bicycle fashion–or any fashion for that matter. She didn’t like shopping and rarely dressed to highlight her ripe, Marilyn Monroe curves or her solid, muscled legs.

Absently dipping into a hamstring stretch, Lania’s thoughts moved to the most recent submission she’d received for her magazine. It was going to need extensive editing. She sighed and stood, gathered her things, and moved toward a picnic table near the tree line. She had reached the table and was swinging her backpack to the ground when she realized there was a slender, blonde man wearing a bicycle helmet doing the same thing on the opposite side of the table.

Lania pushed a thick shock of mahogany hair out of her face and gave the man a quick, small smile before glancing over toward her bike and seeing another one locked next to it. Her eyes were pulled back to the man across the table. He looked pure Nordic, with pale skin and sharp features that set off his shocking green eyes. She looked down at her backpack, mind blasted clear of thoughts, and sat down on the bench facing the parking lot.

She realized that he seemed to be hesitating and she glanced up. Avoiding his disconcerting eyes, she nodded to reassure him that he could sit with her. He sent her a questioning look but sat down facing the water when she gestured at the other bench attached to the table. His eyes sparkled at her in the sun’s glare.

Lania was surprised by her reaction to this man. She didn’t usually get bowled over by attractive men. His eyes were so clear, though. They were the color of new leaves, a green so rich and yet so fresh.

They both pulled out notebooks, and she opened hers to the front pocket where the article was folded, pulled out the typed pages, and began reading. Only a sentence into the piece, she started writing editing points in her notebook.

Her tablemate had also gotten to work, but he seemed to be scratching out more than he was writing. Lania squelched a brief curiosity about his actions. The warm sun on her back helped her relax and she got wrapped up in cleaning up the logic of the essay she was reading. She ignored her body’s awareness of the man across the table.

#

Lania was startled when people on the water began yelling. She looked up at the man across the table, and he met her eyes with a graceful shrug before she slewed around in her seat to see what was causing the commotion. Looking out over the water, she spotted a huge racing sailboat that was thrusting full speed toward the Center’s boats.

They stood as one. Lania jogged toward the water and her tablemate caught up as she reached the top of the ramp.

The captain of the racing boat spun his wheel, turning the boat a hundred and eighty degrees, and brought the boat backwards into the small area across from the Center with a precision that jolted Lania. The crew dropped the sails as the boat came around, and it bumped its fenders against the wooden dock of the pier next to the Center for Wooden Boats.

Lania and her tablemate both leaned against the railing beside the sidewalk and caught their breath. The small waves created by the boat’s rushing spin sparkled in the sun. Wincing, Lania watched Herman yell at the captain and stalk back and forth on the platform, his face a worrisome purple. The boat’s wake tossed the Center’s small boats against the pier and then died out, the fractured reflection of the sun slowly regaining its placidity.

Lania said with a huff, “I agree with Herman. He’s crazy. Sailing into dock is one thing–I hear some boats don’t even have engines–but that show-off move was a bit much.”

Her green-eyed tablemate grinned and nodded agreement. “But you have to admit, he pulled it off. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” The man laughed freely, leaning forward to see the action better. Lania responded to the sound with another uncomfortable surge of attraction. Her eyes flowed over the strong muscles of his neck and throat, across his muscled shoulders, and down the lithe curve of his back. He was watching the comedy still being enacted on the water and Lania checked him out in quick glances.

His chin was square and his jaw angled. The lines framed his thin lips perfectly, and his prominent cheekbones stood out under his wide smile. His nose was narrow, his forehead smooth. His eyebrows and eyelashes were a medium blonde that, along with his pale skin, confirmed that his nearly white hair was natural.

A business suited man standing next to the racing boat was sopping sweat from his forehead with a striped handkerchief and ranting at the captain. The captain seemed to scoff and disappeared below decks. Lania raised an eyebrow. “That guy down there doesn’t seem to be happy with the captain’s maneuvers either. I bet that boat’s designed for some kind of intense racing. It’s probably worth a couple million dollars.”

Lania’s tablemate pointed to the spreaders on the mast and commented, “That boat’s definitely meant to be sailed fast, and in all kinds of weather. With support like that, the mast can probably take gale force winds without even double-reefing the mainsail.” Lania stared at him in fascination, hearing the nautical talk sound so comfortable on his tongue.

The sweating businessman turned and strode up the ramp, muttering under his breath. Lania looked back toward the boat, squinting in the sun and studying the spreaders. She tucked her lower lip under and then said, “Yes, but it’s odd to see a boat like that in the lake. I bet they just came through the locks in the ship canal, and they were supposed to meet that guy for some reason.”

The businessman had reached the top of the ramp and he turned toward them. Lania and the green-eyed stranger shared amused glances at his disgruntlement and waited in silence for him to pass. Lania met his eyes and gave a friendly nod. He broke stride just long enough to sneer at their messy clothing and taunt, “Expensive dreams.”

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.

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…