Peter Havholm May 20th, 2008

Mrs. Sukhwar, on the train from Delhi to Haridwar, was pleased that she had recently married her daughter, in her 20s, who is now living in Australia with her husband. Mrs. Sukhwar found the husband through an ad in the newspaper. Later, I looked through the Hindustan Times (“the HT,” as Mrs. Sukhwar refers to it) to the marriage ad pages which appear every Thursday, and here are samples:

Main head: Grooms Wanted For; Sub-head “Brahmin.”
Match 4 Fair/Slim b’ful MBBS Bhardwaj girl, 158cm/1981 born/Veg. preparing for MD/MS Looking for IIT/IIM/PG-Medico match.

Sub-head “Punjabi.”
Suitable match professionally qualified for Masters (UK), 29/5’3″, simple, convent educated, very good in communication skills, good looking wheatish, fair working girl, caste no bar.

Sub-head: “Khatri.” [a caste]
SM [suitable match] for NM [non-manglikh: an unflawed horoscope] slim b’ful Pb [Punjabi] Kh [Khatri] Kukhrain [sub-caste of the Khatri caste] conv. ed. MA Eng. . . . .

Mrs. Sukhwar is now at work on marrying her son in the same way. “Now I have to get him married.” One wants to find a similar station and educational level, she said.
I met her son a little later when he came from another car on the train to check on his mother. She was sitting in a seat that was “not confirmed,” she had told me, but her son had arranged with the ticket master to make it all right. But the train service is “not corrupt,” she told me. Their procedures are fair. “Very honest, very good.” She wanted me to know that no bribery had been involved. She had talked with her son about it on her cell phone, and when the ticket master came by, she was apparently approved. And when another man arrived later to claim her seat, she sent him away pretty handily (but without any asperity that I could hear), by pointing out that the “ticket master” (the way it is said in Hindi) had not questioned her seat.
She raised a subject that our academic speakers have addressed repeatedly: India’s happy diversity. There are sixteen official languages (this number seems to change from speaker to speaker; we must post the official numbers when we’ve found them), but all the communities are wonderfully generous and helpful to one another, she said, though there were some difficulties with immigrants, principally from Bangladesh and Nepal, who come to India because things are so bad in their country and India is moving up so quickly. When I asked about the killings in Gujarat, she said they were the result of politicians using religious difference to incite the poor people. And the treatment of women was quite good in India except, perhaps, in the villages. But, for example, when the Doctor asked her, as her daughter was born, if she was happy, she had said she was because her family was now complete. She had then provided her daughter with the same education and other advantages as she had given her son. The British? No, there is no bad feeling now. It was so long ago. The children do not know about the British. They don’t even know about Gandhi.
Her son has given her a Dell computer on which she does e-mail and plays games. It is several years old, but it works fine. Some older people complain they do not have enough to do, but she loves to keep learning. If you have the will power, you can learn to do anything.
I made some video of Mrs. Sukhwar as she talked, and she enjoyed seeing it when I played a segment on the camera’s view screen. She gave me her e-mail address so that I could send her a clip. But she also requested that I never show it to anyone else. She is a very simple person, honest and direct, she said. She wants no involvement in politics, and I have changed her name in these posts.
As we pulled into Haridwar station, the son arrived again, and I shook hands and told him how much I had enjoyed talking with his mother. I could not read him at all, though he was very polite.
I thought of Mrs. Sukhwar later, during both of my “dips” or “holy baths” (as she variously called her immersions) in Mother Ganga, and I remembered her travel across India to holy sites she found to be sources of deep pleasure and spiritual nourishment.

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Peter Havholm May 20th, 2008

This video (“In Devprayag”), placed here for continuity in the blog but completed well after our return to the U.S., adds illustration to Mark Wilson’s fine description below of our visit to the beginning of the Ganges in Devprayag. His text explains what the video shows: the three rivers, the suspension bridge, the mountains. The video runs about 3 minutes, and so it may take a minute to come up on your computer.

In mild disagreement with the comment on religion with which Mark ends his post, I’d point out that the ghat we used to climb down into the birth of the Ganges was constructed for sacred purposes, like the little rooms for pilgrims pictured in the video — though there are no signs warning off visitors with secular curiosities. Our position seemed to me analogous to that of one walking into a European cathedral while a service was in progress. If one wanted to examine Christopher Wren’s work on the rood screen, one would wait until the service was over, deferring to the building’s purpose.

Hinduism seems not to have services in the European sense; the Ganges is holy 24/7. So when the ghat on the Ganges is the church, and there are only individual acts of worship, it is a natural practice for priests to approach potential worshipers. And playing by Indian rules, it’s their ghat.

In Devprayag

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Mark Wilson May 20th, 2008

Our trip to Devprayag, where the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda Rivers combine to produce the Ganges, began in Haridwar on the bank of the Ganges. This was the day that I could see India through the disciplinary eyes of a geologist. The rocks and landscapes we saw on our northward journey transcended the extraordinary human culture developed on them. Will Durant once wrote, “Civilization exists by geological consent”. This was a theme as we entered one of the most fascinating regions for any geologist.

Haridwar is in the foreland basin south of the Himalayas. This was the first place in India I saw rocks exposed in low hills and mountains. These sedimentary rocks are folded in broad anticlines and synclines similar to a sheet of paper wrinkled on a table top by holding one side and sliding the other towards it. These folds pushed the rocks upwards, meaning they remained exposed above the thick alluvial plain deposits from the Ganges and other rivers.

The boundary between the southern plains and northern mountains just beyond Rishikesh is dramatic. There is not the usual slow climb up a broad alluvial fan complex as is common when a major mountain range is approached. Instead here the alluvial fans here are very steep and short in width. The alluvial sediments of poorly sorted sands and boulders appeared as cliffs on the sides of the roads, and it wasn’t long before we were driving through the almost vertically-tilted metamorphosed rocks of the mountains themselves. These are the Siwalik Himalayas, the southernmost of the three Himalayan ranges.

Steep mountainsides and short alluvial fans mean that this mountain range is very young, geologically speaking. This region continues to rise in elevation as the Indian plate to the south forces its way north into the larger Eurasian plate. The mountains begin at a faulted boundary, the most profound in the world, as a series of rock sheets thrust on top of each other. This is similar to a shelf of books, each pushed in one direction so they lie imbricated at a steep angle.

We drove up the Ganges River Valley with the canyon (and very steep cliffs, I might add) off to our right. The river is large and quickly moving, but throughout its course we see evidence that at times it is much deeper and faster. Large boulders are motionless in its channel today, but could only have arrive there with a much more energetic and deeper flow. There are many extensive gray sand beaches perched high on the river banks far above the present river, and the rocks around them are scoured of vegetation. This river has a flood stage which is many times higher than the river we see.

Our first view of Devprayag is from the road above (positionality = 30°8’42” N, 78°36’0″ E). Buildings cluster on the steep rocks of a point where the two rivers converge to make the Ganges.

One river, the Bhagirathi, is clear and blue. The Alaknanda River which meets it is muddy. The resulting Ganges is muddy because the Alaknanda is larger and faster and thus carries much more sediment. The mixture of blue and brown waters at the confluence is fascinating. The sediment-rich waters swirl in a spiral which forces some of it up into the clear waters, allowing us to plot the converging currents.

We walked down from the road to a suspension footbridge over the Bhagirathi River. In the middle of the bridge, standing motionless, was a beautiful brown cow who paid us no attention, even when we stroked its sides. We walked through the town of Devprayag to reach the point on the bank where the three rivers converged. Feeling the strength of the water current on our bare feet was exhilarating, especially as we could look into three canyons from the same point. Huge standing waves of the Alaknada were just a few feet from us. Around our feet was a gray sand full of mica flakes, a bag of which will soon be part of a Wooster geology lab.

I wish I could say I fully enjoyed our brief stay in Devprayag at the confluence, but there were several Hindu priests present the whole time who were anxious to pray for us, paint our foreheads, and, of course, relieve us of some of our rupees. They were so insistent that they would stand between us and the view, irritated that we were not participating in their rituals. There is a metaphor here for the relationship of science and religion, but it is too obvious to describe!

As a geologist, this day was a pilgrimage for me. The Himalayas are one of the most active geological regions in the world, and they are the result of a plate tectonic process which still amazes us all. To touch the rocks and feel the waters was a kind of secular epiphany which brought together observations and concepts developed over my scientific career. It is a holy place in far more ways than the religious.

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Peter Havholm May 20th, 2008

I sat next to Mrs. Sukhwar on the train from New Delhi to Haridwar, and we spoke together in English. She has lived in Delhi for 50 years, though she was born in Lucknow, and she was on her way to Haridwar for the same reason we were: to join the Aarti ceremony in honor of Mother Ganga (see Immersion in Ritual, below). She explained to me that “Haridwar” means “door to God,” and that the holy sites and famous temples multiply as one travels north from Haridwar into the Himalayas.
“I cannot remember how many times I have bathed in Ganga,” she said, making the word “Ganga” a mother’s caress. Indeed, she has been to temples all over India in the past several years: as far south as Chennai, and to Benares and Allahabad and Amritsar, among other cities in the North.
“So you have been discovering India,” I said.
“Yes I have,” she said.
“That’s what we are doing,” I said.

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hkreuzman May 20th, 2008

What a surprise!! The Dean of Students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) receives complaints from students. The culture of colleges and universities are remarkably similar in the range of issues and problems that need to be addressed from budget constraints, course planning, and student motivation. What actually surprised me was the degree to which we shared a common conception of philosophy with the faculty at IIT. Professor Tomy’s primary research is on Jerry Fodor’s philosophy of mind and his course in the philosophy of science is analogous to mine.

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jrudisill May 20th, 2008

We’ve been travelling now without internet access. This video is from a couple of days ago in Haridwar.

[qt:http://discoveryofindia.scotblogs.wooster.edu/files/2008/05/haridwar-aarti-5_18.mov 320 240]

Our one evening in Haridwar was the most dramatic, bustling, exciting, claustrophobic, sharing, participatory of our experiences to date. We walked from our hotel through narrow, vendor lined streets to the temple site on the banks of the Ganges where an estimated 15-30,000 people gathered for an evening Hindu ceremony. The streets were crowded with people, sounds, and (perhaps most striking) smells. An intermingling of the smell of trash and waste, a nearby river, a crowed population of people and urban wildlife, and food. These different odors took turns in dominance as we passed along our way, at times none stood out. For me, there were moments when I found it actually stomach turning.

We arrived at the temple site and learned (what we should have anticipated but did not) that we would be required to leave our shoes at the entrance. The shoes were left at a kiosk and we were given a number to use to retrieve them. We walked along the black and white checkered marble flat surface to a similar marble set of stairs down to the river. A guide lead us to what were prime seats in terms of viewing and comfort. Out of the thousands there, we were among the few who were recognized as likely to pay handsomely for such privilege.

We sat and watched individuals and families immerse themselves in the Ganges, an act of spiritual cleansing. The body language and facial expressions were varied. One group, apparently a family, played and splashed about. An outside observer with a Missouri background (like me) would have thought this to be, for this group, like a trip to the Ozarks during summer break. Clearly it is more than that, but for this ceremony strict solemnity was not required.

Many of our group took an opportunity to purchase a “flower boat” (largish leaves molded and pinned together to form a cup in which was placed flower petals and a candle). We each individually took our boat to the river, accompanied by a priest-coach. Our priest would instruct us in the ceremony. It began with a hand washing in the river and bringing river water to our heads and a handful to the flower petals. We next repeated, one word at a time, a long list of words given to us by the priest. Our name was asked, and we were asked to give the names of our family members (spouse, children…) The priest would say a prayer, ask for a gift donation, and then we would light the candle and place it in the river where it would be carried away by the tide.

Just prior to the actual Aarti ceremony, a storm set in. The rain fell hard and we were placed, again due to the privilege of wealth, under the few stationary umbrellas. Once these went up the crowds squeezed, as many as possible, around us for protection from the rain. Those not able to find a spot under an umbrella covered themselves with large sheets of plastic candy bar wrappers (I saw a sheet of ‘Charleston Chews’ wrappers nearby).

Eventually the ceremonial lamps were set ablaze. The video above shows a set of nearby lamps. From my position, behind the camera, the heat of these lamps was clearly felt. The look you see on the faces of Shila and Elizabeth will give an indication of how hot these were from only three or four feet away. Flame dropped, sometimes on or near flammable clothing.

Noteworthy for me, was the spirit of openness. We were welcomed to participate and the prayers of the priest were there for us regardless of our religious affiliation. To be sure there was a monetary gain from our involvement, yet the genuineness of our welcome seemed undeniable.

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Peter Havholm May 20th, 2008

This post goes with John Rudisill’s “Immersion in Ritual” above. Essentially, it is a narration to accompany the 5-minute video below (“Haridwar-Aarti”), taken in Haridwar on the late afternoon and evening of 19 May.

One guide took us from our hotel in Haridwar to the ghat (landing) where we had reserved places. When we arrived at the top of the bank, however, he turned us over to a second guide, who later informed us he was a priest. Not all of us were completely comfortable with removing and checking our shoes before we went down to the river on the wet, slick steps. As we join the more than 20,000 people already there, you can hear Shila doing a head count (“How many are here? 1–2-3-4-5 . . .”).

Our places were reserved on small wooden platforms set on the steps, each the worship space of a priest. Worshippers stopped by with leaf boats full of flower blossoms they had purchased, and the priest added small pots of flame, some color, and blessings. Then the boats were put into the river, where the current caught and swirled them away. You can get some sense of how many people were there in the shots of the opposite bank of the river. The crowd continued well upriver beyond the range of my small camera, and there were just as many people on our side.

Remember when you went to the beach with your family and you splashed your grandmother and she splashed you back? When a family takes a holy bath, there seems to be some of that keen loving pleasure, combined with worship, grace, and a photograph to commemorate the occasion.

As evening arrived on this occasion, so did thunder and rain, but no one’s spirits seemed to be dampened. Our platform featured an umbrella, which our priest raised for us. He then tried briefly to keep the platform clear of folks who had not paid for a space, but we were not willing to push people off, and the press of the crowd soon made him give up. Our range of vision became more and more limited by those who moved close to stay a little less wet.

My camera’s battery ran out before I could photograph the climactic fire ceremony you can see at the head of John Rudisill’s post on this amazing evening. Nor did I get the monkey and her baby who jumped down, shouting, next to Lee McBride, and then ran under our platform. Far less dramatically, my last shot is of one of the priests, silhouetted as he follows an Indian Premiere League cricket match play-by-play on his cell phone. It was like one of those stories or movie scenes in which the minister gets the World Series score during a hymn — but you are meant to know that the Deity smiles with understanding.

haridwar-aarti.mp4

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Lee McBride May 19th, 2008

On May 16th we were fortunate to have Professor Dipankar Gupta of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) present a stimulating talk to us on the caste system in India. Caste, it is said, developed as an occupational social hierarchy. Roughly, priests were placed at the top, with rulers and warriors, farmers and traders, and servants and labors following in turn. Subsequently, caste developed into a system of oppression and exploitation based on metaphysical conceptions of heredity. Those at the bottom, “the untouchables,” are thought to be created of the basest substances, and it is thought that they should be treated as such. While caste has been a widely recognized social reality in India, the best explanatory model for the persistence of the caste system is still a contested matter. Many scholars have suggested that caste persists because those at the bottom of the caste system subjugate themselves, or, at least, play a part in their own subjugation. Prof. Gupta rejects this claim, insisting that no one in his extensive subject pool of untouchable Indians reports that he or she belongs to the lowest caste; none of them truly believes that their bones and flesh are created of the basest of materials. Rather, people of the lower castes attribute their position to (a) a past usurpation or (b) a fall from grace. Gupta argues that the hierarchy of caste is a social construction that has been reshuffled at various points in history. The Brahmins (i.e., priests) were not always on top; they fought/maneuvered their way to the top. Developing his position further, Gupta argues that, while the sanctioned institutions and policies of the caste system are only precariously alive, caste is “alive and kicking” as group identity. It is a sad fact that large numbers of modern-day Indians tend to choose their peers and spouses along caste lines.

It is important to note that Gupta wishes to move past caste and caste distinctions. Yet, he offers no “silver bullets.” This is a complex and deeply-ingrained problem that is not likely to go away quickly or easily. It will take time, careful thinking, and human effort.

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Lee McBride May 19th, 2008

You will have to excuse us. We have been thrown into a country and culture jarringly different from our own, and we are still adapting, still forming our considered impressions, as thoughtful people do. But, you want first impressions, don’t you? Okay, here are a few first impressions.

We landed in Delhi in the evening. Leaving the terminal, I immediately noticed a fog or mist. “No,” Katie told me, “that’s smog.” Then, I recognized just how unlikely it would be for fog to form in 90-degree weather. Okay, so the point is that Delhi is a bit smoggy during the summer. Another thing, New Delhi has a system of roads and roundabouts that, at first glance, appear wide, well-kept, and British. Then, looking closer, you notice that the homes and buildings that line the street are walled- or fenced-off. Then, you notice the people living in makeshift shanties on or near the sidewalk. It’s hard to know what to think about this. Smells? In Delhi, the smell of car exhaust is ubiquitous. There is, of course, the alluring smell of tea, fruit lassies, and street food – sweet, spicy, and fried. Like New York or Atlanta in the summer, from time to time, you can catch the smell of hot garbage and urine. Then, you turn the corner and you are met with intense incense, oils, and perfume.

Please take these observations for what they are: first impressions. I’m still working on my considered impressions. And, given our recent, trip to the headwaters of the Ganges River (Haridwar and Rishikesh), it is awfully clear that I cannot judge India or Indian culture based on my first two days in Delhi. The people, the customs, the environment, the infrastructure are vastly different in different regions. I’ll unpack this when I can.

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gcornwell May 18th, 2008

Colleagues,

Transnational tips on winning friends and influencing people.

Grant

Thursday, Apr. 24, 2008

Postcard: Bangalore

By Madhur Singh

Remember to touch a personal chord,” the instructor tells the class. “Make the other person feel important.” Thus advised, the first graduating class of Bangalore’s new Dale Carnegie Training center splits into pairs, each earnestly practicing a routine the students have spent four months learning. “Hi, my name is Gautam,” I’m told while my hand gets a vigorous shake. Dazzled by the bright smile and seemingly effortless eye contact, I barely manage to mumble my own name before my companion moves briskly along and I find myself being asked what I do for a living. All around me are similar smiling faces and heads nodding attentively in synch. Eventually the conversations take on a more relaxed tone, until a male voice blurts out, “Are you single? May I have your number?” Not exactly a professional business query, but it gets full marks for spontaneity and confidence.

Dale Carnegie Training–which teaches the self-improvement techniques in Carnegie’s landmark 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People–is one of several institutes that have opened shop in this high-tech hub to teach India’s legions of ambitious IT graduates the finer points of life in the modern workplace. “I was overwhelmed when I moved to Bangalore last year. I saw all these people who looked so smart and spoke perfect English,” says Pallavi Deshpande, 28. Her college in the central Indian city of Nagpur had given her a master’s degree in computer science, “but I didn’t have much self-confidence, and my English was a big problem.” Four months and a Certificate Program in Executive Excellence later, her speech is peppered with Carnegie-isms. “I learned that at an interview, you must talk in terms of the other person’s interest and show respect for the other person’s opinions,” she says, smiling.

The huge number of Indian workers staffing the world’s tech firms and call centers has given some employers the impression of India as a nation of 1.1 billion software engineers. But only 1 in 4 engineering graduates–and 1 in 10 graduates in other disciplines–is considered employable by multinational firms. While many graduates possess cutting-edge technical knowledge, their interpersonal and communications skills lag far behind. A study by the National Association of Software and Services Companies, India’s leading software and outsourcing industry organization, forecasts a shortage of half a million IT professionals by 2010, largely because of a lack of grads with the “soft skills” needed to fit into a cosmopolitan work environment.

Enter Bangalore’s finishing schools. “We spoke to companies, educational institutes and students across three states while preparing our course curriculum, and they all said there was a huge need to develop personal leadership and interpersonal and communication skills among graduates,” says Pallavi Jha, chair of Dale Carnegie Training’s Indian partner, Walchand PeopleFirst Ltd. A large part of the coursework is overcoming cultural differences. “The handshake, if you are a woman, is tricky,” says Neetika Verma, a Dale Carnegie instructor. “We tell our female students, ‘If a man doesn’t reach out to shake your hand, take the first step and shake his hand. Show confidence.'” Other tips include learning to address everyone by first name and networking over lunch and dinner.

In the long term, such self-improvement courses may not make or break a technology career. “No matter where you’re working in the IT industry, in three to four years’ time, everyone reaches a uniform level of sensitivity and an ability to communicate,” says C. Mahalingam, chief people officer at training firm Symphony Services. But the basic principles the classes teach can help many get their foot in the door. “Everyone picks up these skills along the way,” says Gerald Santiago, a Dale Carnegie student from Bangalore. “If you want to join the ranks, you must learn these too.”

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