Mystics and Mangoes

Today, Friday July 11, I will be flying to Mumbai and before then I have my weekly Urdu test. So why am I awake writing this blog post? Because so much is happening and I have to share it with you blog readers! First of all, my Urdu. In the past week I have found myself both dreaming and thinking in Urdu - basic stuff but still, as exciting as language learning gets! I can already express myself (albeit grammatically incorrectly) about topics such as the relationship between language and culture or politics and society. Reading and writing is going faster now too. In an intensive program like this, the language overwhelms and frustrates you at first, and then before you know it, it has woven itself into the fabric of your mind and become a natural part of your daily thought process. However, I have a long LONG way to go before I am at the level of Urdu where I feel comfortable just striking up casual conversations with native speakers or writing formal letters or reading newspaper articles. But we are only halfway through the program so who knows how my Urdu skills will be at the end of all this!

Now on to the fun stuff that happened last weekend: our meeting with mangoes and mystics (oh how I love alliteration!). The program took us on a field trip to a sufi shrine in a nearby village/town called Kakori. Sufism is a mystical form of Islam that developed its own character in South Asia. Kakori is also famous for its kebabs and mangoes, so it certainly has many equally warranted claims for fame. 

First let me introduce you to the girls who I live close to and therefore with which I spend a lot of time in rickshaws, at meals, etc., although I would probably hang out with them even if we didn't live close to each other. The two girls to the right are my housemates and Tiana, in pink, lives just a 5-minute rickshaw ride away. They are so incredibly kind, funny, and amazing and totally contribute to why I have had such a great time in India so far!

After the approximately 2-hour car ride to Kakori, during which we listened to lots of upbeat bollywood songs, we arrived at beautiful kakori shareef. 

We all sat down in a room with the pir, a Sufi teacher or master, to hear him discuss everything from the history of Kakori to Sufi philosophy. 

At one point a little murid (disciple) of his came to sit on his lap, and the pir helped his young murid write a number of general life advice. Here they are (with my comments in brackets):

• Soar your soul so high that evil cannot reach you (I like the imagery of the soul as a kite)
• Meet a good and sweet girl who is clever (or boy, depending on your personal preference)
• Dream noble dreams but don't dream them the whole day long

 You can also see the director of AIIS Lucknow, Ahtesham Sahab, giving a really sweet smile in the back of that previous photo.

After hearing the pir, we followed him to the shrines, where the Sufi saints who frequented Kakori were buried.

The buildings for the shrines all looked slightly different, and had different levels of ornamentation. The first one we entered had quite a few tombs, all for the Sufi Qalandar and his family. The walls were lined with framed pieces of Sufi poetry or Quranic script. 

 

At the shrines we were able to hear Qawwali, a special devotional music of Sufis that has its roots in South Asia. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was the man who made Qawwali popular internationally, and if you want to hear him sing one of my favorite qawwalis, click here. The Qawwali singer we heard  sang very well and the raw beauty and power of his voice just brought shivers down my spine, despite the sweaty heat.

After the shrines and the qawwali, we were put to the task of interviewing locals. I interviewed a man who is a musician. He told me that his favorite poet rests here. Although it was hard for me to communicate in Urdu to the extent that I wanted, I was excited to be doing the kind of thing I would be doing as an anthropologist conducting research in South Asia.

After that it was time for some kakori kebabs. These kebabs are unlike any kebabs I have had before. The meat is very nicely minced and cooked to the point that it's a silky smooth piece of meat. They say that this method was developed to please toothless nawabs who couldn't handle tougher meat. They were delicious but since my mouth was not on fire, I suspect that they toned down the spice for us Americans.

After the kebabs they set out crates of mangoes. CRATES! As a life-long mango lover, I was in heaven. However, it was the first time I was faced with a challenge of eating a mango without any knife to cut it with. Thank god for fingernails! One of the local men showed us how to eat the riper, more squishy mangoes, by punching a hole at the top with our finger and drinking it like very slushy mango juice. Most of us just peeled it though, which led to very sticky faces and hands. It was very worth it though!

After our meal we walked around the orchard to see what mango trees look like. We even spotted a jackfruit tree! Since I have come to India, I have had jackfruit as a main dish several times. It's an interesting fruit but I like it. I find the consistency to be somewhere between a banana and a potato, but the taste is quite plain so there is lots of opportunity for spicing it up.

 

Ok now I should really go to bed. I AM SO EXCITED FOR MUMBAI! But first, wish me luck on my exam. Oh and one more thing: if you want more frequent updates of my adventures in India, please follow me on instagram and tumblr. My instagram name is mariellzies and my tumblr is mindless meanderings (again with the alliteration, I know).

Shab bekhair aur khuda hafiz!

Life in Lucknow

A lot of you might be thinking that I must have encountered culture shock or the infamous Delhi Belly or some other sort of extreme experience of adjustment since I got here. But it really is remarkable how quickly the human mind and body can adapt to a new place. Things that caught my attention when I first got here, like stray goats and dogs and monkeys and cows on the road, people peeing and showering outside in clear sight of the street, incessant staring wherever I go, and the mixture of thrill and caution when riding a rickshaw, as well as many other things, have simply become facts of my new life here in Lucknow. And there are many beautiful aspects too. Stunning imambaras with beautiful Indo-Islamic architecture, the bright colors of people's saris and kurtas, the sound of drums down a street lined with mango wallahs, the delicious smell of spices rising up from food stalls and out of kitchens... I am not immune or indifferent to these details, but I am definitely more intrigued than shocked. It is the country of contrasts that I had always imagined it would be. It often strikes me as a mixture of my memories of Cambodia and of Jordan, as well as of a flavor all its own, with a heady scent of fruit, spice, and sweat.

It has been so busy since I got here and I have so much I want to show you! Here are some photos of life in Lucknow and accompanying explanations, with a poem thrown in. 

Here is the outside of the institute, where we take our Urdu classes.

They have flung me into the deep dark waters of advanced Urdu, but in such an intensive program, I feel that this is the level where I will learn the most. Although I spend more like 4-6 hrs on average on homework, rather than the 2 hours they suggest, it is extremely gratifying to already be able to hold basic conversations in a language I had never formally studied before merely a week and a half ago.

Today I tried to speak Arabic and I was already mixing it up with Urdu! This prompted me to write a poem about the mixture of frustration, excitement, and confusion with learning a new language and in the process forgetting the one you previously learned. 

Tongues and lips

Blink and flutter

With new values

Of another world I sink into

Like a sea of someone else's memories

My pen is my sword

In the battle against my childhood logic

Of languages I once thought I knew

For to remember something new

You need to let go of everything

And recognize that with each memory lost

You grew.

All my classes are very small and individualized and run from 9am to 1pm every day. In most of my classes it is just me and one other girl, who also has a background in Arabic, and in other classes we aren't more than 4 people. All the teachers are so kind and helpful, and encourage us to learn from our mistakes rather than feel ashamed of them. Chai in the morning, late-morning, and afternoon, as well as lunch with fresh mango often offered as dessert, help keep our minds alert throughout the day. I'm so happy to finally be in the land of chai and mangoes, two of my favorite things in the world!Every Wednesday a monolingual speaker comes to speak to the intermediate and advanced level students. Last week a descendant of the Nawabs for which Lucknow is famous visited us to speak about the history of Awadh, what this region was called before independence. It was especially exciting to meet him since he was featured in the documentary about Lucknow that we are watching in listening comprehension class. Apparently he is a bit of a local celebrity!

After class we either have a cultural class (I do cooking on Mondays and will post a recipe in another blog post), meet with our language partner (I'm paired up with a really sweet and patient 19-year old Muslim girl named Nusrat), explore (which can mean finding the perfect chikan dupatta shop or stumbling upon the crumbling British Residency), or finally making our way home with the trusty old yellow and green auto-rickshaws. Along the way, mountains of mangoes piled high by street salesmen have become a common sight, as well as baby monkeys eating stolen mangoes (they are so cute!).

It isn't strange to see cattle in the middle of the road. These urbanite cows chewing on trash in over 40 degrees Celsius would probably envy the Swedish cows I grew up near, who munch on lush green grass in cool, silent pastures.

 

Outside our house there is a beautiful little garden with a swing. They water it every day and yet the grass still gets too dry - that is how hot it is right now!

Meet John, my host family's parrot. He sits outside of my shower window and once in a while says "Kya hua?" (What happened?) or "Hello!" in between squawking. It is so funny!

During one of my first days here I headed to the old part of Lucknow, called Aminabad, to buy some cheap kurtas. You wear kurtas either with pajama type pants or leggings, and you can get them for less than $2 in any print or design, including one that can match your macbook computer!

These are some of the lovely ladies I traveled to Aminabad with. They are just a small selection of the amazingly caring, friendly, goal-oriented and easy-going people I've met thanks to this program.

 Apparently our visit to Aminabad only skimmed the surface of the place, but it was beautiful nonetheless in my eyes. 

Aminabad is where you are most likely to see Urdu signs, which are otherwise rare in Lucknow (and India in general). I caught a photo of one below though! Urdu is the third and lowest script you see. 

And alas wherever we go we attract a LOT of stares. Here staring wasn't enough -- we were caught on film! I love how the two rickshaw drivers on either side are also staring at us. It can be unsettling at first, but after experience with this sort of attention in the mediterranean and the Middle East, the Indian reaction to my pale skin and blonde hair doesn't come as a surprise.

I will have to share photos of the imambaras we visited last Thursday later this week. I will also have more posts after this weekend, since I am going to Ambedkar Park on Friday with meri zabaan dost (my language partner) and a field trip on Saturday that will take us to a shrine and a mango orchard, which I will also want to post about. Until then, khuda hafiz!

Coming home to the foreign

I wrote the following post last Monday but haven’t been able to post it yet for a number of reasons (lack of wifi, classes and lots of stuff to keep me busy – classes, shopping adventures, Indian food, my shower, my bed, my homework, etc.). I will intersperse this post with updates in italics and will definitely post some new pictures as soon as I have a chance to upload them to my computer. ENJOY!

One of my favorite feelings in the world is being immersed in a completely unfamiliar place, feeling the thrill of the exotic tease all my senses as I am challenged to transform the foreign into the familiar. Am I strange? I guess it’s a symptom of my travel addiction.

I am in India.

This thought runs through my head a lot ever since I got here. I am writing this at a small wooden desk, in a swelteringly humid bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto a garden, walled in by stone and crimson bougainvillea. Hair is sticking to my neck as I rub a sleepless night of unfamiliar heat out of my eyes and I can hear the parrot cackle outside, along with the cacophony of morning birds. I am in India. It was only that hot because I hadn't yet figured out how the fan and air conditioning worked. Now my room is so cool I've got a cold!

As we only have internet at the institute, I will post it there, after having even more experiences and lessons learned. Today is my placement test, to prove that I’m truly a beginner in Urdu. PLOT TWIST: First they put me in Intermediate, and today I was promoted to Low Advanced. We are already reading newspapers and magazine articles! Before that I will have breakfast with my host family and the two program companions who live here with me, I will have my first ride in a rickshaw (overrated), and go through a State Department Briefing via skype.

Here are a few photos I’ve been wanting to post of my journey so far!

Part 1: WHAT TO DO WITH A SIX-HOUR LAYOVER IN FRANKFURT

Our program had conveniently booked a 6-hour layover in the very international airport closest to my long-distance love. I was certainly not going to spend this layover in the airport (as if I ever spend long layovers in the airport haha – layovers have allowed me to discover Istanbul, Bucharest, and Iceland).

We took the train to Frankfurt am Main Haupbtbahnhof to start our little stroll around the tiny piece of Germany we had time to visit. After a short walk we stopped for some pretzels  and pastries, and the very german apfelschorle (apple juice mixed with seltzer water).

We then stopped by the Euro sign, where no one could deny that we were in Europe. There was even a gift shop where you could spend your euros on collectible euros.

The pinnacle of our trip was the ascent to the top of the Main Tower, with an elevator taking you up 54 floors to a maginificent view of the city of Frankfurt and the surrounding dark green countryside, with the Rhine river running through it.

I was ecstatic to be with mera pyaar and we took the opportunity to take lots of photos before our next episode of long-distance.

Back at the airport, four of us program participants had a final meal of good asian wok before our next 2 months of Indian food. I highly recommend this place if you’re ever stuck in Frankfurt Airport and really hungry!

Part 2: LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT: FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA

We arrived in Delhi just passed midnight, jetlagged after two uncomfortable overnight flights across over 9 timezones. From the moment we stepped off the plane, we were attracting stares. As we piled into our air-conditioned minibuses who would take us through the warm Delhi night to our hotel, I could see old men looking down at us as if we were in a gladiator ring, fighting culture shock. I was just so excited to be in a place I had dreamt of for years!

We stayed at the Ibis hotel, which already had breakfast ready when we arrived around 2am. I relished the free wifi and a room to myself with a bed to stretch out on for three hours before my third and final flight to Lucknow. Those three hours were so refreshing after so much sleeplessness on airplanes!  The breakfast was really good too, and I had my first sip of chai in India, as well as my first taste of what Indian breakfast is like.

We nearly missed our flight to Lucknow because our minibus driver took a wrong turn on his way to the airport. At the small domestic terminal we seemed to be the only non-Indians, and due to the tight schedule we were rushed through security, overweight fines quickly handled by the program. The brief 45-minute flight to Lucknow was so nice after the 7 or 8-hour flights of the past couple of days, especially in the company of all my fun and easygoing program participants. However, the haze we encountered in Delhi seemed to stretch across the entire distance we flew, making my window seat not as exciting as I had anticipated.

As we drove to our hotel in Lucknow, the small and elegant La Place Sarovar Portico, I just wanted to get out and explore Lucknow with my camera. But after lunch at the hotel I was already so sleepy, and decided to take a half-hour nap, which swiftly turned into two hours. Fortunately I still had time to explore some of Hazratganj, the famous street at the heart of Lucknow, before dinner. Here are some of my first impressions captured through my camera lens:

After dinner I watched dramatic love stories, Tamil movies with English subtitles, and Little Krishna 3 on the hotel room TV before falling into comfortable sleep in the air-conditioned room.

The next day our orientation started, where we met our program instructors, introduced ourseleves as best as we could in Urdu, were given cellphones, and gradually siphoned off to our host families. I was in the fourth group to leave to my host family, the Khan family living in the most modern and trendy part of Lucknow, Gomti Nagar. I would share the host family with two other program participants, Sabrina and Yasin, who are sure to become good friends over the course of the program.

In the car to the host family I saw cows in the middle of the road and monkeys climbing bridges, as well as shacks by putrid gutters juxtaposed with huge beautiful houses with mughal architectural elements. This was the India I had heard so much about, right in front of me.

My host family live in one of those big beautiful white houses with a garden and terrace and servants and jovial auntyji welcoming us into her cool, airconditioned sitting room with glasses of cold water. It felt like I had stepped into an oasis – I couldn’t believe this was my home for the next two months.

I have a host mother, who I call auntyji, as well as two host siblings living here. My host sister wants to be a photographer and has already been a tremendous resource on where to go in Lucknow. My host brother, who hasn’t really engaged with us so far, just came back from studies in London. Auntyji says all her children were educated in either Oxford or Kings College and she has family all over the USA and Europe. The host family in general seems well-traveled and well-educated, but most importantly, so caring of the students they host, of which they seem to have a lot of experience. My host mother clearly understands all our English but mainly answers us in Urdu – with that sort of support I feel like I’ll learn the language in no time!

Here are some photos of my room and ensuite bathroom

My bed! <3

View out my window!

My bathroom

In the afternoon we sat and chatted with auntyji in the TV room. The rest of the afternoon was unplanned so Sabrina, Yasin, and I chose to watch a movie. Just as we were ready to press play a strong breeze brushed through the courtyard and into the house. Thunder rolled in and soon the skies opened up – the monsoon was here! We watched in awe at the rain pelting down. We hadn’t expected the monsoon to come for another week! Apparently the monsoon gives some preview rain showers before it actually hits. It is getting hotter by the day and the 5-minute rain that comes once in a while does little to curb the heat. Oh well.

At dinner auntyji and the cook made us a very lightly-spiced dish of tofu (she had read in a magazine that Americans liked tofu), chapatti/roti with cheese, potatoes, corn, and shedded cucumber in custard. It was actually very good but we told her we are ready to handle Indian spice if she wants to give it to us. We finished the meal with my first taste of Indian mango – absolutely delicious, confirming that aam (the Urdu/Hindi name for mango) is still my favorite fruit.

At the dinner table we talked about Lucknow and Bollywood. We were all tired though and soon went off to bed. I took a nice cold shower before bed, although it did little to help the sticky heat of the night, as the electricity had gone out earlier that afternoon and still hasn’t returned this morning. Welcome to India!

I hope you enjoyed the blog post. I'm so happy I finally got to post it! Next posts will showcase photos taken on the roads of Lucknow, that are run in total chaos by cows, mangos, and motorcycles mostly (the monkeys dominate the bridges), my shopping excursions, and my trip to the Bara Imambara and Chota Imambara (shi'a shrines in Lucknow). I will also be doing more exploring of Lucknow this weekend and will certainly have pictures and stories about that to post as well. In other news my classes are super challenging, but my teachers and fellow students are all amazing and in this environment I am learning so much! 

Khuda hafiz!