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Indian arrival
by Mirja Ahti

After a sleepless night on the aircraft sitting next to an obese Arab suffering from nasal congestion due to late stages of a cold, I am not in the most tolerant mood. Ramesh, who was sent to meet Kathryn and me at Chennai airport, doesn’t appear to be in the arrivals hall. Outside the exit, a hot tropical morning greets us with a sea of brown faces, arms and signs of all sizes, names written in ink and pencil, printed on pieces of paper and on torn cardboard. I need to walk past the taxi and rickshaw drivers, couriers and reception committees several times, before spotting his big, happy grin amongst the crowd.

After finding Kathryn, a medical volunteer, we head for a large white taxi with comfortable seats. A picture of Ganesh, the elephant god, adorns the front, in the back there are a couple of photos of Tamil film stars. It is very hot inside. As it is early morning, the traffic is unimaginable. The few cars, including ours, have to negotiate their way through incalculable two wheelers: bikes and auto rickshaws, buses with people hanging outside the doors and sitting on the roof, pedestrians, cows and dogs. Many of the cows still have painted horns, mainly red or blue. I am told this is done for the harvest festival of Pongal. Kathryn and I just look at each other in disbelief. The airport transfer can take anything from 25 minutes to two hours, Ramesh informs us, still smiling in his boyish way.

The time doesn’t matter, as the surroundings occupy our senses: car horns, shouts, diesel engines, cow dung, sewage, flowering frangipanis, fruit sold on the pavement, rotting market waste, children, beggars, smiling faces, devotional songs, film music and the sounds of building work. We are taken to a cheap hotel to freshen up. Two iron beds with thin mattresses, no blankets, rusty shower, dirty walls, Indian toilet and a window overlooking a building site. Scaffolding made out of thin tree branches and bamboo tied together with rope into an enormous lattice on the grey cement wall.

Our first breakfast in India consists of idlis (savoury cakes), steamed rice and white bean cakes, poori (unleavened bread) with fresh chutneys and sambar (vegetable stew) washed down with delicious fresh orange juice. Egmore station, an attractive red painted building with white balconies and domes, is just a short walk away from the hotel. Without hanging around any longer, we catch the eight-hour express to Madurai.

Even before finding our seats, the openness of the people is apparent. They look at us with child-like curiosity. Women are in pink, blue and bright green saris, their ears, noses, wrists, ankles and toes adorned with jewellery, bangles and rings. The colours look delicious, like in Gauguin paintings, against the warm tones of deep brown skin. Many of the women have chains of scented, white jasmine flowers tied around their shiny black, plaited hair and bindis (decorations) of various shapes between their eyebrows. The blue vinyl seats are not comfortable. People who have enough room remove their sandals and sit cross-legged.

Ramesh and I talk and joke most of the way, both of us smiling and laughing. This is interrupted by people jumping on the train carrying tea and coffee, chapattis, pooris, biryani, biscuits, bananas and guavas for sale at a few rupees. The vendors make themselves noticed by changing their voice to a lower, gruffer pitch while walking up and down the corridors, repeating the names of the goods on offer in Tamil.

A teenage boy opposite us, shy at first but encouraged by his mother, starts to tell about himself and his ambition to become an engineer and work in America. His younger sister follows our conversation, while playing with her bangles on her wrists and ankles, and makes sure I noticed her henna-decorated hands.

Little by little, most of the people in the carriage join in. Food and snacks are being shared. All the rubbish is casually flung out through the windows. Books and electronic equipment pass around. The teenage boy’s family invites me to visit their house in Madurai; addresses are swapped. One of the women asks if I want some jasmine in my hair.

An argument starts over a double-booked seat. Shouting lasts for about half an hour. I was told later that the man threatened to sue the conductor. After getting it all off his chest he makes himself comfortable on the floor and falls asleep wrapped in his lungi (cotton wrap).

By the end of the journey, we have been introduced to almost everyone in the carriage. Ramesh is obviously tired but still smiling, translating and keeping us company. He tells me he came on the overnight train from Madurai to Chennai and has hardly slept at all. I tease him about his job: sitting in the train eating, reading and chatting to nice people. Call that work?

Outside the train much of the land is cultivated: paddy fields, banana plantations, sugarcane, cotton, groundnuts and chickpeas. People are attending to various stages of farm work, all done manually. Monkeys are waiting for an opportunity to pinch some food, large herds of goats, few cows and water buffaloes around villages. Strong smells drift in through paneless windows. The toilet smells at the stations are intensified in the heat: rotting waste here and there, jasmine from the ladies hair, coconut oil from the men’s, weak smells of Nescafe from the stainless steel containers, coriander, lemon and old fish from the villages.

I am suddenly very tired, but happy, relaxed, all the worries, pain and disappointments of the last couple of months dissolved.

The Teaching Abroad car is waiting in Madurai. We follow the driver and Ramesh to a restaurant for some mushroom rice, the others prefer local dishes: poori and parotha (flatbread). This restaurant is very popular, all tables occupied by families and small groups of men.

Another two hour drive to Sivakasi takes us through small villages; shops still lit up in the dark, rubbish being burned on the road. People are already asleep outside their houses and shops. The roads are bad, full of potholes and too narrow for the volume of traffic. Horns need to be used constantly when overtaking. The boys at the front seem happy listening to their Tamil tapes and singing.

We check in at the Arun Lodge in Sivakasi. Kathryn and I hardly have enough energy to put up our mosquito nets and clean our teeth before falling asleep each on our own side of the iron bed.

I wake up early owing to heat and the very loud music from the wedding hall next door. Kathryn and I have breakfast with Ponraj, the assistant manager, in the best hotel in Sivakasi: the Bell. We were told that Standard Fireworks own this hotel. The Rose Café serves Western as well as Indian dishes, sweet white toast, bright red jam and overcooked eggs.

My first project was planned to be monkey observation in Papanassum, but I find out this morning that it has been cancelled. Ponraj, the zoologist, accompanies me in Teaching Abroad car to CCD, near Karyapatti, Virudhunagar district. He explains, very briefly, about the medicinal plant project.

Ponraj is 27 years old, has two brothers and two sisters. His father is a banana farmer. He owns some land in his village, but also rents some. These days, he says, sustenance farming does not make sense, as food in the shops is cheaper than production costs for basic crops like paddy. On his own land and on that rented from locals, his father grows 1000 banana plants. Every part of the ‘tree’ is used; the fruit, of course, leaves as plates in restaurants, whole plants at weddings and religious festivals as well as flowers separately as offerings (poojas) to gods.

The total annual income from each plant is 30 rupees, (approx. 45p). These earnings have enabled him to pay for his son’s master of zoology degree. But now that Ponraj is earning too, they are financing one of the daughter’s university studies together. This means having to wait for another couple of years before he can get married. He tells me that his parents would let him have his say, when choosing a wife, with their approval, of course. He hasn’t got any idea whom he is going to marry, but the date has already been set.

It is all still new to me: the dry thorn forests, charcoal burning from thin twigs for fuel, dusty roads, lorryloads of sugarcane, monkeys, goats and cows. Ponraj is very knowledgeable about everything. I can ask him any questions about the flora and fauna, and he enjoys elaborating on all subjects. He has a very genuine smile. I enjoy his company.

We stop in a small village for some bananas, biscuits, water and soap for washing my clothes. Ponraj advises I should buy washing powder for soaking and blue solid soap for scrubbing the stains off. Outside the shop are sacks of pulses of various shapes and colours, cottonseed and groundnut cake for the cattle, rice and spices.

Here, on the plains, the paddy harvest is well over. Threshing has finished too. The villagers are making sure every grain is collected. The threshed straw is thrown on the road in high mounds, so all vehicles must drive through them to extract the few remaining seeds to be collected later. The same method is used for coriander too. The unmistakable scent wafts into the car through open windows. A group of farm workers sit nearby in the shade, gossiping and keeping an eye on the proceedings.

Although the land across central Tamil Nadu is very flat, here and there a strange looking mountain of rock rises from the plains. They look like over-sized pyramids or gigantic anthills. The barren rock has been eroded due to heat and monsoon rains make them look like manmade artwork.

Plenty of food seems to be produced everywhere, even in this dry area. Many people may not ever have any cash, but in villages they have enough to eat, Ponraj tells me. We are a few kilometres from the nearest village and miles away from any shops. There is no TV in the centre, no telephone line and only one square metre in the office has a mobile phone reception.

The medicinal plant complex consists of several hectares of land, medicinal plant nurseries, a few out buildings: kitchen, meeting rooms, staff quarters and the circular brick building with a pond in the central courtyard, bedrooms, toilets and offices forming a full loop on the outer perimeter. My room is very simple: pentagon shaped stone floor, unplastered brick walls, two barred windows, ceiling fan, two bare light bulbs, hard mattress covered in a printed sheet and a two nails to suspend the mosquito net. That’s all. A ladies’ toilet is next door: an Indian toilet on a platform with two taps one for flushing, the other one washing, a large bucket and a jug. The intense tropical sun filters through a variety of trees and vines. I am very excited, so what may seem like a prison appears to me like paradise.

At lunchtime I was introduced to the Swami, a strong dark skinned man. His wavy, oiled, black, hair is tied back in a bun. He is wearing a white dhoti and a towel covering his shoulders. He seems a kind, gentle and wise person.

The meals are eaten sitting on a stone wall built around a table. A palm leaf canopy supported by a sturdy bamboo structure shades the area.

Ponraj told me that the food here will be very healthy, made from locally grown ingredients, with a lot of variety, all natural and low fat. This time we have rice, sambar, freshly made coriander chutney and guavas. The other three volunteers introduce themselves: David, Laura and Louise. They are much younger than I and don’t appear to be very enthusiastic about being there. I find out that they have had a few disappointments with the conservation programme. They seem sceptical, so I, being so childishly enthusiastic, suddenly feel younger than they are.

Swami serves the lunch on large stainless steel plates. He is watching my poor attempts to eat the soft mixture with fingers. He encourages me to eat more guavas, as it is obvious I cannot manage to eat the rice. A few grains at a time would take far too long.

I am charmed by my surroundings: strange bird sounds, a great variety tropical trees and butterflies. I see five different species in as many minutes on my short walk of the grounds.

I have yet to get used to the Indian way of life. We are going to start helping with the medicinal plant project by visiting a nearby village, taking some cuttings with us and helping the women plant the herbs in their allocated medical plants plot. This is scheduled for three o’clock. Nothing has happened by three thirty. I ask David, who has been with the group the longest, what we should do. He is obviously used to the way things are and goes for a walk. At half past four, Swami knocks on my door; we will be going in 15 minutes. Just after five we walk to the nursery to take the cuttings.

We stroll across the fields of onions, okra and groundnuts. The paddy harvest has already finished. A flock of green parakeets disappears into the crown of a coconut palm. It is nearly dusk. The village is a group of small mud houses with palm leaf roofs. There are no streets, but most families have made the front of their dwelling made dust free by spreading a mixture of cow dung and water, which hardens when it dries in the sun.

A small herd of horned cows is resting next to one of the houses. Lentil plants have been piled against a wall to dry. Chickens of all colours and sizes are rustling among their dead leaves and stems.

Goats make as much noise as they can in their tightly packed thorn enclosure. We plant a few herbs while the strong-looking women are watching us warily. Swami tells us that we will have to sit and wait until a meeting starts. It is getting dark. One of the men brings us a camp bed for us to sit on.

In the meantime, Swami attends to a woman who is suffering from exhaustion. She has worked 12 hours a day in the baking sun on her paddy harvest. Some fresh leaves and stems are prepared into medicine while we are watching. Not only is Swami a medical plant expert, but he also has skills like bone setting, blood stopping and can cure poisonous bites.

The village has just one house with a television. As there is no other furniture, the only room soon gets filled with people of all ages sitting cross-legged on the clay floor. Tamil Nadu’s favourite soap is about to start. Half dozen young boys are more interested in talking about cricket with David than watching TV. Amazingly, the first power cut doesn’t start until the programme is over.

The meeting starts. We sit on straw mats under the moonlit sky, being bitten by mosquitoes, despite the strong repellent we sprayed on before leaving.

It is not convenient for Swami to translate everything that is going on; he is not a man of many words anyway. It seems the young spokeswoman of the village is very strong-willed. She doesn’t agree with something Swami is saying. He tells us later that CCD (Covenant Centre for Development, set up to tackle the root causes of children leaving homes and ending up on the streets) had had a large order of medicines and cosmetics. They are trying to arrange manufacture of them in the village under his supervision. He also says, that one of the women was questioning our presence: ‘Why are they here, they don’t speak Tamil and have nothing to do with the village?’ If we had come as tourists, we would have missed out on this kind of honesty.

The village women surround Laura, Louise and me, wanting to know why we don’t wear saris and jewellery. We are given some milky, sugary malted ginger tea outside one of the homes. Somebody offers us pan, the betel nut paste, while Swami proceeds through hibiscus bushes with a torch in his hand collecting flowers for tomorrow’s breakfast tea.

No torchlight is needed for crossing the fields back to the centre. The moon is full and bright. Dozens of bats are darting over our heads while we finally have our simple supper with the sound of crickets and frogs singing in the trees above us.

First published in VISA 86 (Aug 2009)