Things I Learned in India Wednesday, Jul 30 2008

     Several years ago I went to India for three weeks to attend a friend’s wedding. (Yes, I know you saw that episode of Seinfeld.) I was in graduate school at the time, getting an MA in Literature and this lovely girl was in my class. We got to be close and she invited me to her wedding in southern India.  My feeling was that she had offered me a place to stay with her family and her friend so why the heck wouldn’t I go? Even though I had to spend $1,500 on a new transmission two months before I left… Even though I would be traveling to the other side of the world by myself… Even though I would be the tallest whitest person there… I went. I was looking through my photo album the other day and I had written some things down that I should have taken with me, which I’ll add here, but I should have also written more about what I learned.

     1. When you’ve boarded the plane to Detroit and are just settling the monster butterflies in your stomach and you’re trying to look like a savvy world traveling adult and your mother comes flying down the aisle dragging behind her a small Indian woman after having persuaded the flight attendants to delay closing the plane so that she (your mother) can point out that this woman’s husband is going to Mumbai just like you and tells you you should follow along with him so you don’t get lost/abducted/robbed/mugged/curried by Krishna-knows-what in that foreign airport….thank her kindly and acknowledge you know her. Do not squinch down in the seat without making eye contact and mumble “Thanks,” shaking your head in embarrassment until she and the Indian woman she dragged aboard are off the aircraft.

     2. Your mom was right about tagging along with a native. Upon reaching India, if you are indeed a single lady travelling alone, do find an Indian family who will take you under their wings. Otherwise, you won’t have anyone to defend you against the very helpful Indian porters will snatch up your luggage before you can tell them you’re actually going to Chennai, not Goa, and then you’ll be in a real pickle.

     3. It doesn’t matter if you try to blend in with the locals if you are in a small town, you will never ever blend in. I was clearly the tallest (I’m 5′ 6″) whitest (I think this complexion is referred to as Consumptive) person the tiny town had ever seen and I finally got to know what it was like to be a celebrity.

     4. You cannot possibly eat rice and curry for every meal unless you are very used to it. So when your friend’s mother kindly purchases corn flakes and has the help heat the milk for you (because it isn’t pasteurized), you will eat it and be grateful, even if you are eating rice and curry alongside it. You will also suck down the Coca-Cola she purchased as well, although Ribena is pretty tasty.

     5. It’s not as hot as you think it will be. September in south India was the end of the monsoon season and quite comfortable for a girl raised in the allmight oppressive heat and humidity of the Ohio River Valley.

     6. When in India, you may sleep with your friends’ friends and your friends’ cousins. Picture this: a train built during the British colonization of India with no air conditioning crammed to the gills with passengers, including the bride’s family and most of her friends and their families. It’s 10:30 pm and you still have 7 hours to go until you reach Chennai. Your friend’s best friend finds you in your little sleeping berth and explains she has given up her berth to someone’s grandmother and says she will be bunking with you. Conundrum! Did Emily Post cover etiquette for such a situation? What’s the proper procedure for spooning your friend’s friend on a train in India?

     7.  If you tell them you like spicy food, they will not believe you. My friend’s household help, a darling old man who had served the family for two generations, kept making the chai tea weaker and weaker until one morning it was nothing more than warm milk. He also prepared a separate dinner for me which was “not so hot.” Honestly, I love spicy food and insisting I like it spicier than this was kind of embarrassing.

     8. Things you should take with you to India:

     Photos of your family. Indians are big on family and my friend’s friend’s family could not believe that I lived alone but were reassured that my sister still lived with our parents. I wanted to show them where I come from.

     Gifts for your hosts. This applies anywhere, actually. I brought several coffee table books with large pictures of my hometown and home state and a cookbook for the bride to remember her time in my city.

     Lots of clothes. The laundry facilities I encountered were unable to keep up with the clothes I sweat in/spilled curry on/got wet. 147% humidity means…stuff doesn’t dry quickly.

     9. Like speaking the language of the country you visit, wearing the clothing of the country is a good thing to do. It shows you’re trying to experience the culture in all its facets. Ladies, wearing a sari is just like wearing a dress and don’t let them talk you out of the gorgeous silk one because its “too heavy.” Nonsense. I wish I’d gone for the silver and blue silk but I do love my green and gold Bengal cotton.

     10. You’ll get used to the traffic, where signals are optional, honking is mandatory, and you feel like you’re going to be in a terrible crash every time you get in a vehicle. Relax. It’s fine.

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Halloumi Shroomi Kababaloomi Thursday, Jul 24 2008

     You know I love writing, but did you know I love cooking, too? Yes. I do. As with writing, I love to talk about cooking, new recipes, new techniques, discussing why all the recipes in Cooking Light require the sale of a kidney on the black market in order to make since their ingredients are ridiculous. (Honestly, if I could afford black truffle oil, I wouldn’t put it in my food, I would just slather it all over myself.)

     Tonight I am trying a new recipe and then something I made up which is turning out to be more fun. First, the fun one which is the appetizer. If you are not familiar with halloumi, it’s a strange wonder – cheese that doesn’t melt when you put it on the grill – that’s an excellent appetizer as well as a conversation starter because it squeaks when you eat it. This goat/sheep milk Cypriot cheese is similar to mozzarella taste and texture-wise.

     For tonight’s appetizer, I threaded baby portobella mushrooms and cubes of halloumi on bamboo skewers, drizzled with olive oil, and then grilled for about 10 minutes. I have christened this dish Halloumi Shroomi Kababaloomi. If I am ever a super hero, this might also double as my super hero name. I love how portobellas are sort of meaty-tasting when you grill them, and I didn’t need any seasoning for the mushrooms and cheese, besides the oil. If you have access to a local favorite, Basilicata, this is an excellent dipping sauce for such things.

     For the main course, I’m trying out an eggplant parmesan recipe I found at HungryGirl.com. Let me say I’m not a huge fan of non-fat/low-fat items because I find that so many of them are not really, well….food. They are foodlike, to be sure, but I prefer most of my edibles to be as close to their natural and unprocessed state as I can get them. That said, I like a healthy idea and a new challenge once in a while so I’m trying Hungry Girl’s eggplant parm that features a coating of Fiber One cereal.

     As of the writing of this post, the parm is still bubbling away in the oven so the review of that will have to wait until such time as I may write it.

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Southern July Saturday, Jul 19 2008

     Part of being from the South is being at least somewhat adept at dealing with a true Southern summer, although many people claim that it’s not the heat that does you in, “it’s the humidity.” Maybe it’s not about being adept, it’s just accepting your fate gracefully for three months. July has settled over us and walking outside after eleven in the morning means walking into a steamy wet towel that will wrap itself around you with a drippy embrace from hell.

     You know you live in a hot place in the US when you go to India in August and the best way to describe the weather in comparison to your hometown is “refreshing.”    

    I was assigned once to write an article for a women’s magazine on how to look nice in hot humid weather. The list of interviewees included a couple of pageant queens who have to smile and wave at fairs and 4H contests all year, and a local news reporter whose job involves being outside a lot. Most of their advice included the sorts of makeup that doesn’t melt off your face if you happen to be sweating like a Derby thoroughbred in 97 degree weather. Honestly, in the summer I am willing to admit defeat on the facial front. Yes, I realize my mascara is forming a black tear on my left cheek. No, I’m actually not wearing blush today. And yes, I’m aware that my eyeshadow is pooling just under my nose.

     Southern summers are about becoming one with your iced tea pitcher. I have made two batches a week for the last two months, experimenting with flavors like black currant and lime mint. Sometimes you can pick out the glimmer of a sun tea jug on the back patio, pekoe leaves soaking up the rays in their tannin bath. Southern tea is the best. My mother’s family hails from the northeast and bless your hearts, you northern folks can’t make a decent pitcher of tea to save your lives.  

      One of my favorite books is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking bird. And one of my favorite lines from that book: ”Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.” Doesn’t that sound genteel? I’d like to be a frosted soft tea-cake instead of a panting sloth covered in a thick film of sunscreen and perspiration.

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Oh, hello… Thursday, Jul 17 2008

     I had a birthday last week. It wasn’t a huge milestone or anything, just a regular old birthday birthday. I’m normally a huge fan of my birthday. I remind people for weeks that “it’s my birthday soon, you know.” It’s obnoxious and unbecoming of anyone over the age of 9, really. But I believe that if I don’t get excited about my life then nobody else will so I just go nuts. I throw myself a party. I make myself cake. The works.
     When the anniversary of my entrance to this world from the waiting womb of life rolls around, I try to make it special. I wear something I feel really good in, I look for the Birthday Magic that happens on everybody’s birthday, I pull out this little ceramic curio I have of a birthday cupcake half eaten by a fat little mousie. One year I went to the casino and hardly spent anything but I got some cool swag because I kept mentioning my birthday. See? The Magic. It happens.
     The night before my birthday this year I had a bit of a meltdown. An explosion. I, ahem, “came unglued” as they say. Without going into much detail, and without inviting you to my pity party, let’s just say that most of my ranting involved repetition of the phrase, “THIS ISN’T HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO TURN OUT!”
     I did manage to collect myself enough to go to work the next day and throw myself a pretty fun party the following weekend, but this general dis-ease has been following me around like an evil homunculus reminding me that things aren’t going as I had planned.
     I don’t think I’m “better” yet, and that’s probably why I haven’t posted in lo these long days. Birthday Magic can usually propel me to the next year and then some. But I lost my mojo this year.
So as not to end on a Debbie Downer note, I feel certain I shall find the lost mojo of the writing spider and do wonderful things forthwith.

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Remember that time I got kicked out of the writing group? Friday, Jul 4 2008

    I confess, Dear Reader, that I am a writing group reject. Yes, I have been unceremoniously booted forth from a writing workshop led by an eeevil dictator. It didn’t start that way…but the honeymoon was short. We were together nearly a year and we had some good times. It was a messy sordid affair.

     Occasionally, I email my favorite creative writing professor from my MA program and ask if there is anybody in his classes he could set me up with to get a group together. The only time he said yes was to point me toward a man we’ll call Joe but to whom I privately refer as “Captain Crazyman.” Our first meeting was dinner at a favorite restaurant and we talked about writing. He seemed interesting and said he had a group of five or six people he was getting together for a writing workshop. They were a group of talented writers and I was excited to join them.    

     Things went sour quickly. The first few months I found I truly disliked his writing. Also, he would IM me at work with odes to my breasts and once said he loved me. He knew I was married, but persisted in throwing lavish compliments my way. I was more interested in getting to the business of writing. I deflected his faux woo and tried to focus on literary pursuits.

    Over time in the writing group, he became dictatorial, chastizing and admonishing behind their backs those who he felt were not up to his standards, praising my efforts within the group. He had invited my friend C to come to meetings which she did, but when she could not keep up with his rigorous demands for commentary and critique, he dropped her out of the group.  Others were threatened with the same.

     On a personal note, he was invited with C to come to my birthday party that year and proceeded to frighten the guests with his belligerence, obscure references to history and literature, and intrusive opinions on such things as the military. When he met a woman he married a few months later, he insisted that he and I were such good friends that my husband and I should meet her and share our opinion. He dominated the evening with inappropriate comments on their sex life, rude comments toward me and Husband, and more obscure references that none at the table understood. I was getting more unhappy with this “friendship.” 

     (Also, he ends his name with “Esquire.” He is neither an attorney nor a gentleman. According to wikipedia, here’s what the term means: Esquire (abbreviated Esq.) is a term denoting social status. Within the U.S., its use as a postnominal honorific is to indicate licensed attorneys. The term carries little social distinction today outside of the United States. The term is British in origin. Ultimately deriving from the medieval squires who assisted knights, the term came to be used automatically by men of gentle birth. The social rank of Esquire is that above gentleman.)

    Though I enjoyed some of the work from other  writing group participants, I found Joe’s writing boring and bad. Critiques of his work provoked him to loud defensiveness and belligerence, yet he insisted we mark up the paper as much as possible. He wrote impossibly long chapters of a complicated militaristic spaceship novel that drew on his history in the military and love of the sci-fi genre. I love sci-fi, too, but this was nearly unreadable. HIs behavior in the meetings and out was off-putting. I was coming home from our monthly meetings unhappy and resistant, where other writing workshops have energized me.

    The end was swift and ridiculous. I had submitted a piece to the workshop, providing the caveat that this was a first draft and not ready for line-editing or deep analysis. “Please just look at the bigger picture right now,” I wrote in my email. “I need to fix the plot before I can work on the spelling!”

    Joe sent it back to me a few days later, having used Word’s track changes feature. I am not exaggerating when I say that almost every line of the 12 page story had something that had been commented on. There were no more margins left, having been used for comments such as, “This name clearly refers to the Byzantine pope who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims. Reconsider this character’s name.”  Comments pointed to obscure references or focused on exactly what I had requested they all ignore.  He wanted to use this “as an example of how people should be marking up others’ manuscripts,” he said.

     Actually, he wrote a three page treatise on why this is how the group should mark up work, and the various shortcomings of the other group members in this department.

    I said no. I said no, you cannot show this to the group. This isn’t what I wanted, this isn’t right, and it’s my work so I get to say how it’s used.

    Things got ugly and in a series of emails. He insisted that since it was his group, he should be able to do whatever he liked and it was only through this example that we would all gain the benefit of his wisdom. He pitched a grand old hissy fit which ended in “See you in the funny papers.” I was subsequently bumped off the group listserv and have not seen or heard from a single member of the group since.

    Wha happened???  I don’t know, really, considering I was a strong member of the group. I was a published author, had an MA with a creative writing focus, and read everyone’s work every time we met – I can’t say that for all involved. I’m certainly better off without him in my life, and what good was it to be forced to read his drivel month after month?

    I’m still looking for a good writing group.

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California Baby, You Suck Tuesday, Jul 1 2008

    I recently discovered that I am highly (annoyingly) allergic to fragrance. That means I had to go find new shampoo, body wash, shaving cream, hair goo, deodorant, laundry soap, lotion, lip balm, and makeup in order to continue with the state of hygiene to which I (and Husband) have become accustomed. (You probably don’t realize this, but fragrance is everything. I threw out about $50 worth of lipstick alone.) If I perchance use some hand soap fortified with fragrance, well… I itch from my nose to my collarbone plus a spot on each wrist. It’s incredibly uncomfortable and rather looks as though I have an enormous hickey just south of my jawbone. I prefer not to risk it and I’m going totally fragrance free from now on.

     I started my search for new fragrance free stuff at Target. Good old Target. Love Target. I found everything pretty quickly, but they let me down in the shampoo/conditioner department. At my Target, you can only get one kind of fragrance-free (not lightly scented, not scented for sensitive skin, not full of masking fragrance) shampoo and that is California Baby’s super-sensitive formula. Which is $8 for 8.5 oz. That is some damn expensive shampoo.

     The bottle has all kinds of lovely earthy feel-goody things on it about how the women who make it are mothers and want the best for their babies and for the planet. It’s biodegradable, made of natural ingredients that I can pronounce and have heard of. I thought I was making a good choice.

     The results, Gentle Reader, were disastrous. I hate that baby shampoos do not lather. The first real problem is this: my normally shiny thick hair felt as though I had smeared a pound of Crisco into my follicles, so dull and heavy were they. No amount of rinsing could help. No change in the amount provided relief and I am now stuck with $18 worth of shampoo I will never use.

     I wrote the company, sure to start out by saying I love their company’s ethic on sustainability and producing a good product, but alas, that I was not happy with my purchase and could they please let mek know if this is normal for the product to illicit such a response.

    That was six weeks ago and nary a word. No “Thanks for trying our product, sorry it didn’t work out, have some lotion.” Nothing. I find that very bad customer service and I hated the product to boot. Tell all your baby friends to stay away from California Babies. I say, California Baby, you suck.

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