The Village People

The Daily Moo- reverse colored mom and calf

I’ve finally returned from my 3 day trek over Tamil Nadu. Time for a long update.

Map o' travels-click to enlarge

On Monday, we woke at the heinous hour of 4:30am to get ready for our 6 hour journey. It’s strange to me that at the beginning of the summer (while shadowing at the lab), I’d sometimes be awake until this time, fooling around on the net or watching t.v.. Now, I’ve reverted to old person mode and go to bed between 9:30-11pm to wake up anywhere between 5-7a.

Since everything runs on Indian time, our air conditioned van arrived 45 minutes late. We’ve come to expect that things will not go according to plan here, as people run on their own schedules and things are a lot more laid back. “India will teach you patience” is the best and most accurate thing we’ve been told since arriving. My patience was certainly stretched to its limits many times on our 3 day journey, and I still struggle with the amount of waiting around that we do. But I think I’m getting better.

The first leg of our journey took us Southeast, to a region called Darmapuri (arrow 1 on the map). The temperature there is at least 5-10 degrees cooler since there aren’t huge buildings to stifle the wind and it's a lot more open. The area also had a lot more foliage and a beautiful backdrop of hills and mountains. It finally felt like Asia, or at least the Asia that I had imagined for myself.

An example of some of the super narrow country roads...where the trucks like to play chicken

We stopped at a roadside vegetarian restaurant for brunch. The professors are very careful about what places we eat, since we’ve already had a brush with the unpleasant. Our digestive tracts still haven't truly recovered from whatever we were hit with...we've even created an exclusive club: the LPC (liquid poo crew). Everybody wants in.

One of the animal nutritionists who traveled with us, Ashwari (shortened…her real name is more than 10 letters) explained to us that in India, vegetarians don’t eat any animals, fish or eggs but will still drink milk and eat dairy products. Pseudo-vegans, basically. It’s funny because they just assume that all Americans are meat eaters, and were very surprised to learn that one of our group is a vegetarian.

The professors attempted to surprise us after brunch by bringing us to the “Golden Temple” which is the site of worship for the Hindu goddess of wealth. Although the lines ended up being too long, when we exited the temple we were met by one of our biggest surprises yet. A man was leading a painted elephant around the premises. The elephant was trained to “bless” people when they paid a rupee by curling up her trunk and bonking them lightly on the head. We literally FREAKED OUT at the site of our first pachyderm and went running after it with rupees. The elephant was extremely gentle and sucked the rupees out of our hands with her trunk. That made the stop totally worth it.

Eventually, we arrived at the extension branch of the veterinary school and met up with the other researchers. They honored us by allowing us to plant baby palm trees in the back of the school, and promised to send us pictures of the grown trees in about 3 years. From there we moved on to the first of the milk districts that we would visit during the next 3 days. The milk districts are made up of little villages which lie off the beaten path where nearly every house owns a cow or two. The residents pool all of their milk and sell it to the local collectors, and this keeps their families and village running. The villagers depend on the cows for their own lives, which is part of the reason why Indians revere cows as holy. Many villagers also keep buffalo (not holy, for some reason), goats and chickens as well as a dog or two to protect the household. Goats are considered walking bank accounts, since they can be sold for meat in times of need. Buffalo produce milk that has a higher fat content than cow’s milk, so their product reaps a higher profit (although they may not produce as much).

A milk collection center

As soon as we got to our first village, the people started piling out into the streets and the staring began.

I don’t really mind when the children or the villagers do this (since they rarely seem to get out and probably don’t see too many white people), but when the adults in the cities stare, it eventually gets on my nerves. People know better than to continue to stare for 5 minutes, even if we do look weird. One guy in Chennai even achieved mega creeper status and kept moving to stand near our group, totally invading our collective bubble.

But I digress.

The houses are built of what looks like clay or stone and painted bright colors, with open doors and windows. Some houses have roofs made of dried palm leaves. They range in size from one bedroom to large, multi-room households with TVs and satellite dishes where the richer folks reside.

One of the nicer farm houses, complete with satellite dish

One house that we visited (probably with the only real bathroom in town) had marble floors. Even in the villages, the uneven distribution of wealth was evident. But still, the friendliness of the people was the same across the board, and we were offered tea, coconut milk and a variety of other food over the time that we spent there. We even got to try a traditional Indian snack of unripe mango, which is more like a vegetable than a fruit. They cut it up into slices, dip it in salt and mild chili powder and eat it like a crunchy French fry. Unfortunately, eating these unripe and unpeeled mangos broke one of the three traveler’s commandments:

1. Don’t drink the water

2. Don’t eat anything that you can’t peel

3. Don’t eat raw vegetables or anything from a street vendor (unless you know them personally)

Hopefully we won’t be paying for it later.

The villages are pretty much self contained units, each with what looks like a school (or at least a school nearby), a place to hang out, a place to get water and a place to bring your milk and other goods. The children run and bike around the streets and many people have motor bikes. There were a lot less cars and a lot more bullock-drawn carriages. Bullocks are castrated male cattle with huge, painted horns that are strapped up to yolks and used to pull carts around. In each house, entire families would live together, including the grandmother and grandfather, immediate family and relatives. A lot of the older women were silent and tiny, and many sported double nose piercings. The most memorable older woman I saw seemed nearly blind and was in charge of a giant compost pile near the one cattle chute in town. While we were collecting samples from the cows in the chute, she would scrape up the manure with her BARE HANDS (literally scraping the ground with her nails) and toss it into the compost pile. There were things that could have been used as shovels…I have no idea why she chose to use her hands. That woman was exxxxxxtreme.

The children were especially fascinated by us. Literally everywhere we went in every village, there was a little band behind us, watching our every move. If you smiled or waved at the girls, they’d run away or start giggling, and the boys would push each other towards us. One even took a million pictures of us on his cell phone. Many of the children knew some English words, and were thrilled when you talked to them or asked them questions. They were especially excited if you spoke any Tamil (the native language). Some words we’ve learned (probably not spelled right):

Nandri- thank you

Adu- goat

Mardu- cow

Coti- chicken

Yani- elephant

The children would go running around pointing at the animals and saying these words until you pronounced it right. It was very cute. One of them asked me where my village was, and knowing that Massachusetts would be a difficult word for them to pronounce, I simply wrote “Boston, America” on my notebook. They could pronounce that. Soon we were all drawing pictures for the children, which they’d fight over and run away with. Another girl started calling us “famous girls” in Tamil, and it certainly felt that way. Every time we clambered back on to our van to go to the next village, the people would all come swarming up to wave goodbye and yell to us.

Drawing for the kids

At all of the villages, our job was to collect information about the cows using a survey and gather samples of rice gruel, bran, and whatever other types of food the farmers chose to feed their animals. We'd then give them a bag of the mineral mix to try out for two weeks before we returned to collect subsequent samples. Each house had at max of about 4 cows, with some only having one. The cows were usually tied to immovable objects in the yards and left to stand around and think about whatever cows think about. In general, they looked alright, albeit a bit skinny. But some things made no sense to me, such as the fact that many of the cows had no water to drink. They didn’t seem dehydrated, but it only makes sense that if milk is about 80% water, they should be supplied with a constant source. And it’s not that there was no water to give; some farms even had their own springs or wells. One particularly pretty house nestled in the back of a big field of tapioca plants had a square trench dug into the ground for water and something like a moat going around the back of the house. Supplying continuous water to the beasts would be such a simple way to improve production. And providing shade wouldn’t hurt either.

A cow eating her gruel

After collecting samples from about 35ish animals, we finally quit around 9pm at night. Exhausted, we checked into the hotel and tried to get some sleep. Tuesday was very similar, collecting samples in the morning, traveling in the afternoon (to Pondicherry- #2 on the map) and getting more samples at night. We knew that Pondicherry would be a good place when we arrived at the hotel and found American style toilets rather than the customary Asian “hole in the ground” variety. With those toilets, the “flush” requires you to manually pour some water down the hole, and no one uses paper. It's pretty awkward.

Pondicherry is a charming place on the coast of India which used to be an old French settlement (a large portion of the current residents of Paris descended from the French in Pondicherry). The name literally means “new village”. On Wednesday, we finished the last of the collections (about 60 total for the whole trip) and spent the rest of the day touring around this historical spot.

Our tour was lead by a very charismatic Indian vet who is married to one of the animal nutritionists from Madras Vet School. He spoke English better than nearly all of the people we met over those three days, so it was very refreshing to talk to him. He wore a pair of snazzy yellow Ray Ban aviators that I eyed admiringly. When I finally told him that I liked them, he took my own cheap aviators off my head and put them on. He then offered to let me keep the Ray Bans.

Indians are too nice for their own good.

I felt too guilty to keep them, but I swore to myself that I’d eventually get my own pair (when I win the lottery).

Dinner in Pondi was orgasmic. We were directed to a French and Italian style restaurant located down a back alley with a huge outdoor seating area and giant comfy chairs. After hours on our feet collecting samples in the heat, sitting down to a cold Fosters, an Italian meal and non-spicy food was better than anything we could have asked for.

Drool

Double drool- pesto covered red snapper with mashed taters and veggies

The temperature was perfect, the company was good and the restaurant was extremely cozy and well decorated. We even finished off the meal with crème brulee. A British couple next to us lazily smoked cigarettes and drank beer, chatting about their own travels. It was like a scene out of a book- exactly what I was hoping for from Pondicherry.

Afterwards, we visited an ashram, which doesn’t really have an English word equivalent. It basically means “a place to meditate, be at peace and think.” This ashram was started by a religious figure called The Mother, who was a very wise woman who wrote a lot about meditation and life in general. I didn’t catch her whole story but I plan on reading more about her when I have regular internet access.

We were told to take our shoes off, turn off our cellphones and leave our cameras outside when we entered the ashram since it is a very serious and holy place. Inside, it was so strangely quiet, and the atmosphere was almost thick? with concentration. Our guide described the phenomenon as “feeling the waves of concentration” between all of the people meditating. It was weird, in a good way. We sat for a bit and took in the atmosphere. No one stared at us. They were all enjoying their own thoughts.

After a brief stay there, we moved on and ended up walking around a place called Auroville which is home to a huge golden, golf ball shaped temple. It was after visiting hours, so we decided to come back on our next trip to Pondicherry (in about 2 weeks for more sampling). I’m sure I’ll be writing more on that later.

Commuters near Auroville

Our guides at the temple- check out the Aviators ;)

Our final stop was the Ganesh (elephant God) temple back near the French quarter. In that temple we were able to see the golden statues of Ganesh and witnessed the priests blessing people and leaving offerings. It was a very strange system…I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. The inside of the temple was beautiful, but also seemed strangely like a mall, with people leaving rupees at different stands and paying for coconuts and leaves to offer to Ganesh (after all, he is an elephant god). There was even a golden and silver chariot attached to a trailer hitch which Ganesh “travels in” that people could rent out for special occasions. I guess donations are a part of every religion, but it just seemed odd to me that so much of the prayer and worship revolved around money. On the way out, we were again blessed by the temple’s elephant, who stood outside on a big platform.

She was just as gentle as the first elephant we saw, and was ridden home to sleep for the night by one of the men who was in charge of her. He just hopped on, no big deal, and took her for a leisurely stroll back down the streets of French quarter to wherever she slept.

A piece of French quarter

While we waited for our van to pick us up, we walked barefoot to the beach and made friends with another street dog.

The beach reminded me a lot of Salisbury beach in New Hampshire, which was comforting in its own way. Same amount of trash, same number of vendors and people. Not the same smells, but still very much like Salisbury. The van eventually got us, and we headed back to our home sweet hostel.

And that pretty much sums up my life during the past 3 days. Today, we were forced to visit the immigration office since there was a minor hiccup with our visas. Apparently we aren’t supposed to be doing any kind of research since we bought tourist rather than student visas. But all is fixed now. Other than that, we made yet another trip to the mall where we got a bunch of gifts and were harassed by shop owners. You have to learn to haggle with them to get the price you really want. Being foreign places a big “gullible” sign on your head and people will take your money, no problem. We’ve learned that if you just name your price and play hard to get (literally exiting the store if they say no), they will come running after you with the exact price you wanted just a minute later. You’ve just gotta be firm and stick to your guns.

In other news, I was super excited to discover that the creator of the RB-51 vaccine for brucellosis is currently living across from us in the guys’ hostel!! He is an Indian veterinarian visiting for some reason or other, and I nearly asked for his autograph when I found out. This probably isn’t very exciting for you non-vet people, but for me it was like meeting a celebrity.

In other other news, we finally found a place that sells real, American style cookies. We all have a bit of a sweet tooth, and as such have been searching for some good desserts besides the chocolate bars you can buy in the local convenience store. (BTW, they also sell Kinder Eggs, the candy with a toy in the middle that were banned in the US due to toddlers choking on them). A lot of the things that Indians call cookies are really just spicy crackers. At the mall, we discovered a sweets shop with real chocolate chip cookies. At 40 rupees a pop ($1 American for one cookie) they were a bit overpriced, but totally worth it. We eventually noticed that the logo of the company had a little British flag in it, which probably explains the priceyness.

Also...besides finding real cookies, one of the best parts of my week was discovering that we can indeed see Harry Potter 7, Part II in ENGLISH on the day it’s released!! I swore to myself that I would wait if I could only see it with subtitles, because I wanted the entire experience (including Daniel Radcliffe's nasally voice). But we can indeed see it in all its glory!! WOO HOO! Annd I'll be able to see it a whole 9.5 hours earlier than you Americans :P. Don’t worry, I won’t ruin any of the surprises.