Yeh nila durvaza hei (A little bit lost in translation - part 2)

The blue door

For five weeks now my flatmate Zoe and I have been taking Hindi lessons once a week in a bid to up the stakes and try and improve our Hindi beyond just communicating with the auto rickshaw drivers. Our Hindi teacher Rajni is a great teacher and also good at teaching us about various cultural nuances and keeping us up to date with the latest Hindi songs. The favourite is still Char Baj Gaye (Party Abhi Baaki Hai) by Hard Kaur - Trans: “It’s four o’clock (the party’s still going)” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpG-NnmjbzI 

There has also been the odd disagreement over certain ‘cultural’ particularities. Take colours for instance. We were describing various objects around the flat;

“Yeh kya hei?” (What is this?)

”Yeh quitab hei.” (This is a book). Simple enough. Then we got to the door.

“Yeh kya hei?” 

With confidence I answered, “Yeh nila darvaza hei.” (This is a blue door).

Rajni frowned, “Noooo, Katie, this door is not blue, it is white.”

The door is pale blue but it is most definitely a blue door.

 “No Rajni it’s definitely blue.” This debate went on for some time with Zoe and I testing Rajni on other colours in the flat but seeming to be in agreement that yellow was yellow and pink was pink. The walls, skirting boards, cupboards and doors are all painted in yellow, pink and blue pastilles. It looks like someone was going to open a sweet shop and then changed their mind and turned it into a flat. After a while it seemed like neither side was going to win until Rajni pulled out her trump card,

“In India that colour is not blue; it is white with a bit of blue in it.”

What I struggle with most in Hindi are the pronunciations. My homework for this week is to sit in front of the mirror and repeat “ta ta ta ta ta ta” only not with a hard “t” but with my tongue bent backwards against the roof of my mouth and a long aaa sound at the end. It might sound simple but if you are not accustomed to speaking with your tongue positioned in such a way just give it a try and see how you get on. Part of the problem is that when I start trying to practice, I look and sound so silly that I break into a fit of giggles. And Rajni saying, “Katie, learning Hindi is not funny,” just makes it worse.

Recipe for bread in a pan

Craving fresh bread but have no access to yeast or an oven? What you need is bread in a pan.

I wanted to share this recipe as it has quite frankly revolutionised my life. That probably says more about my life right now than it does about the definition of ‘revolutionised’ but there are few things on this earth that make me happier than fresh baked bread so when I found out a way to make it that didn’t require the use of an oven (my cooking facilities consist of two gas hobs) and doesn’t taste half bad I was more than a little bit excited. I know that there might be others out there reading this blog that also have access to limited means of cooking and little or no access to fresh bread. So, in case you haven’t come across bread in a pan already, I thought I’d share the secret.

I first discovered this amazing invention when I was in Darjeeling. They have quite a few Tibetan restaurants there and when you order your Thenthuk (noodle soup) it comes with Tibetan bread on the side. Now as much as I love curry I’m finding my appetite for spicy food in this hot weather has diminished somewhat. Tibetan food is less spice based and also tends to be much lighter as it doesn’t contain much oil or butter and the ingredients are mostly steamed or boiled. So I decided when I got back from my trip to Darjeeling to seek out the recipes for some Tibetan dishes. Imagine my delight when I came across the recipe for Tibetan bread and found that the only cooking implements required were a frying pan or saucepan and saucepan lid and some form of gas hob or homemade fire (for non-city dwellers). The ingredients also couldn’t have been simpler or cheaper; flour, baking powder, water and salt and it only takes 15 minutes to cook. It sounded a bit too good to be true but when I gave it a try it really worked.

Of course there were a few failed attempts including the one I made that I took into work and gave to my colleagues which looked and tasted like an overly salted pancake. Everyone enthusiastically took a piece but then ate in stony silence which meant they must have thought it was really bad because they are not usually shy about giving feedback. I’ve tried some amazing dishes colleagues have made that have received heavy criticism from others or comments like, “it’s ok but you’ve made better,” or, “I prefer the one my mother makes.” It’s like partaking in a daily Master Chef competition at which I repeatedly fail. However, the ones that I’ve typically not brought into work have turned out pretty well. So here’s the recipe:

Mixture:

1 ½ cups flour

1 cup water

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

For cooking:

1tsp oil

2tbsp water

Mix together the dry ingredients then add the water bit by bit and beat the mixture until smooth. The mixture should be thick but should still run off the spoon relatively easily. Spoon the mixture into the heated pan and then drizzle 2tbps of water around the edge. Cover the pan with a lid and cook for 10 minutes on a low heat then turn the dough over and cook for another 5 minutes. It should rise to about an inch thick, be slightly brown on both sides and doughy on the inside. So there it is, the amazing bread in a pan.

(Dedication - this post is dedicated to Michelle Novak and the non-stick frying pan you donated to me and Zoe on your departure from Delhi. Thank you for saving us from having to eat any more meals made in the frying pan of death which burned our hands and charcoaled any food that went near it.)

A-Z of insects in India

Absolutely enormous ant

Absolutely enormous ants that feed off the normal sized ants. The small ants do all the hard work whilst the big ants supervise and then eat the small ants for dinner. It’s a bit like a lesson in corporate politics. So fascinated am I by their routine that I spent an entire lunch time the other day watching a big ant give the little ants instructions and then gobble up any small ants that came too close. I swear I even saw him use a bit of torn off leaf as a napkin whilst checking the stock market figures on his laptop.

Cockroaches – urgh! I know it’s probably insect discrimination but there is a reason why in films featuring insects, cockroaches always play the mean, scary characters. They are diiiisgusting. I’m pretty bug tolerant and my inner Buddhist refuses to kill most insects but now when I spot one of these running towards me there is nothing doing but to whip off my flip flop and flatten it. I’ve been informed that some of them can fly. If this is true and if I do encounter one then I’m afraid that may be the end of my tenure in India. Either that or I’ll be purchasing a floor length bee keepers’ hat.

Gheckos – not technically an insect but I wanted to mention them here as they are frequent visitors during the summer and the best bug deterrent around as they eat the cockroaches, spiders and mosquitoes. They look like lizards that have been put through a mangle as they’re completely flat and sort of glide along the walls and over the ceilings. Their only downfall is that apparently their droppings are highly poisonous; still there is no such thing as a totally safe option out here.

Hunter spiders – I didn’t know these existed in India until I got bitten on the foot by one. I sort of blame myself for knowingly allowing it to reside in my room thinking it was just a harmless house spider. I also didn’t really relish the idea of trying to catch it and throw it out as this thing was the size of a small dinner plate. It was so big it didn’t crawl so much as swagger around the room. However, two weeks of purple swollen foot later I was not feeling so merciful. The next hunter spider I see will be joining the cockroaches. Of course my inner Buddhist still says this is not good karma and I will most likely be entering the next life as a cockroach or a hunter spider.

Mosquitoes – these can be found just about anywhere in the world but what makes the Indian mosquitoes stand out is that, like the ants, they’ve been supersized. The tiger mosquitoes in particular are so big that you can see the stripes on their body that give them their name. Possibly one of the most pointless insects to exist as I fail to see what their purpose is other than to inflict pain, spread disease and cause sleepless nights. My mosquito net is my favourite thing. I can lie in bed and watch the mosquitoes try to come near then bump into the net whilst I shake my fists at them in triumph and make faces. It’s all about the small victories.

Termites – again, not exclusive to India but a lot more common here as they thrive in the warm, damp conditions provided by the monsoon season. What I don’t understand is that I thought termites were supposed to feed on wood, so it’s a mystery to me why I frequently open my wardrobe to find them munching quietly on my shoes. Possibly because they provide the warm, damp conditions that they crave but I didn’t bring that many pairs of shoes with me in the first place so I don’t really appreciate those that I do have being used as sustenance.

Always keep an onion in your pocket

“If you don’t like eating them raw then just carry an onion in your pocket.” This was the advice I was given the other day by a colleague on how to avoid heatstroke. It was backed up by my other colleagues and accompanied with sympathetic looks that implied, “I can’t believe you’ve got to this point in your life without carrying an onion in your pocket.” No one seemed to be able to explain to me or provide any scientific evidence as to why onions serve so effectively as portable air conditioning units. Perhaps it’s because if you carry enough onions on your person the smell will be so pungent that it will lessen the risk of others crowding your personal space and causing you to sweat more. I did suggest this to my colleagues but it was met with blank expressions. However, with temperatures reaching 42 degrees and rising, it is getting to the point where I’m willing to try just about anything.  

Having a constantly ‘damp’ backside and waking up in the middle of the night and wondering why your mattress is wet only to realise it’s your own sweat is sort of what 42 degrees feels like. Stepping outside feels a bit like entering an overly central heated house (Soph, it’s like your house in winter time when Steve’s not there only three times hotter). When it first started to get really hot I was convinced this must be what had happened and that there must be an ‘off’ switch somewhere. Usually when it’s hot if you sit in the shade you can cool down. Not so. Here the air is hot, the walls and floors are hot and the water that comes out of the tap is boiling hot having been nicely heated by the sun. My flatmate Zoe described it best when she said that coping with  Delhi and its extreme temperatures feels a bit like a perverse science experiment. You are forced to push your body to extremes you never thought possible. I marvel at how I manage to sweat out water at the same speed at which I drink it or, in the winter time, eating double my normal daily intake of calories and not putting on weight (this was quite a novelty at first but after a bit I just wanted it to stop being cold).

Eventually temperatures are going to reach around nearly 50 degrees and I’m almost intrigued to see how my body will cope with it. It could be the most spectacular spontaneous human combustion anyone’s ever seen. 

A safer Delhi

The other evening I was waiting on the metro platform at Central Secretariat on the women only section of the platform. It was around 9.30pm so there were only a few other women on the platform and a gradually increasing crowd of men sandwiched up together on the other side of the barrier. As the crowd of men increased, a few of the men nearest to the barrier defiantly walked round to the women’s section. Whistling and shuffling their feet as they did so, pretending they’d accidentally strayed onto the giant pink platform markings, they were mainly emboldened by the fact that the number of women was few and they were mostly younger women. As they edged their way across I could see them casting sideways glances at me and the other women stood around me. It might have seemed harmless enough but it made my blood start to boil.

When I first arrived in Delhi I wasn’t aware of the women’s carriage on the metro so I got on one of (they still make up the majority of the train) the mixed carriages. All at once a hundred pair of eyes fixed on me, roving up and down taking me in from head to toe and back again. I had made the mistake of straying into the men’s domain so this entitled them to stare freely as a way of making me feel uncomfortable and putting me in my place. The term has been come to be known as ‘eve teasing’ in India and this kind of conscious leering and sometimes physical harassment is something that women have to put up with on a daily basis on public transport, when walking down the street or waiting in line at the shop. It is a deliberate attempt to exert power, destabilise you and make you feel threatened. It is difficult to fight back because often if you stare back or raise your voice in protest to the staring it is taken as additional provocation, as though you were asking to be harassed in the first place.

This isn’t a blog post I really wanted to write because it’s one of the few negative aspects of my mainly positive experience of living in Delhi. I also want to stress that for as many men that stare, make comments and participate in ‘eve teasing’ there are twice as many that do not, and who would also agree that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable. However, unfortunately it is a part of living here that I can’t ignore, even if I wanted to, and if it’s not talked about and addressed then nothing will change. I know that my daily stare-a-thon on the metro or as I walk to work or pop out to buy milk is only the tip of the iceberg and I know that at the end of the day I can at least shut the front door and leave it behind me. It makes me feel better though that there are organisations in Delhi tackling the wider problem. One such organisation is Jagori and their Safe Delhi campaign http://safedelhi.jagori.org/ The campaign aims to make different groups more aware of how to recognise and tackle sexual harassment and create safer environments for women and girls, particularly in larger cities like Delhi. Hopefully so that eventually there will be no need to have such things as a women’s carriage in the first place.

As for the metro story, thankfully it had a positive ending on this occasion. I’d been bracing myself to step onto the metro and physically bar the way of the barrier breakers but five minutes later when the metro pulled into the station I realised I was saved. The entire women’s carriage was packed full of women. As the metro doors opened the men were met with steely looks from Indian grannies and young women alike and suddenly they weren’t so brave. Quickly turning tail with an air of innocence to suggest it had all been a big misunderstanding, they sidled back over to their side of the barrier.

Related articles

Men in Delhi metro ladies coach cough up Rs 500,000 fine: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/8159166.cms

Special coach for women: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/special-coach-only-for-women-in-delhi-metro/131770-3.html

Tea

Britain, next to Ireland, is the world’s biggest tea drinking nation. Collectively we drink 165 million cups of tea a day which equates to 60.2 billion cups of tea a year. Presumably that means we also consume around 60.2 billion digestive biscuits a year as well but I’ve yet to confirm this particular statistic.

The British have been perfecting the art of tea drinking since it first arrived in the UK in the 16^th Century. It’s our standby mechanism for taking a break from the working day, our emotional go to drink when we’re feeling sad or consoling a friend, a favourite remedy for cooling you down on a hot day and a socially acceptable excuse for inviting the new neighbour round. We even have set times of day at which it should traditionally be drank and I genuinely believe my body is built to function more effectively if I drink tea at 11am and again at 5pm (and a few more times in between). And yet if I’m honest, I’ve never really given a great deal of thought to where all this tea I drink comes from and the process it goes through to eventually arrive in my local supermarket.

Last week I visited two tea estates in Kurseong, north east India. My dad and I were taken around the factory and shown where they dry the tea, grind the tea leaves, sift out the tips of the tea leaves, separate the tea dust (this is what goes into tea bags) from the leaves and then bag it up ready to be shipped around the world. Outside on the tea plantation our guide, Sobin, introduced us to a group of women picking tea near to the pathway. They smiled and giggled when my dad bowed down, hands together and said ‘Namaste’ in faltering Hindi. I’d made him practice at breakfast that morning;

“Dad, what’s the word for hello in Hindi?”

“Namanas”

“No, Namaste. Again.”

“Namaskaria”

“No, Na-ma-ste…”

So whether he’d actually been saying “hello” or an anglicised variation of I’m not quite sure.

Sobin explained that the women are expected to pick 4kg of tea a day and for this they are paid Rs.92 per day. In addition they are given 10kg of rice every 15days and provided with a house to live in next to the plantation and free medical care. They are also provided with a pair of blue standard issue wellingtons and a parasol to keep the sun off. Rs.92 is the equivalent of £1.27 in the UK. It is probably just about enough money to be able to buy the basic food items and amenities needed to support a small family (4/5people). It is unlikely to be enough for them to be able to build up any kind of savings, experience a life outside of the tea estate or pay for things like their children’s school and transport fees (the transport costs alone to send a child to school beyond 5^th grade are around Rs.600 as all the secondary schools are outside of Kurseong). Once they retire the women are no longer entitled to the house and free medical care. When this happens the hope is that they have family outside of the tea estate that they can stay with (most likely their children and/or grandchildren) but this is not the case for all of them.

One of the food store chains that this particular tea estate supplies to is Harrods in London. For a box of Darjeeling tea “picked exclusively for Harrods” as it claims on the packet, it would set you back £15.95 for 125g. The ladies on the tea estate would have to work for 13 days and pick 50kg of tea to earn the same amount. Of course the average British person doesn’t tend to buy their tea from Harrods. A standard 125g packet of tea bags would probably cost you around 90p which equates to approximately £28.80 being charged per 4kg of tea. However, that still means that only 4% of the cost of the tea that we’re buying is contributing to the wages of these women.

I had always made the assumption that Fair Trade means a fair price for the producer but also a fair wage and working conditions for the workers. The tea estates that we visited are both part of the Fair Trade Labelling Organisation (FLO). However, although they operate under Fair Trade conditions, there is no fair trade minimum price set for Darjeeling tea. This means that the fair trade premium they receive can be used to pay for facilities (i.e. the blue wellington boots and sun parasols) rather than going directly to the workers. Coupled with this is the problem of overproduction. Currently tea consumption is increasing at 1% whilst production is increasing at a rate of 2%. Oversupply has therefore led to falling tea prices and wages of estate workers. With intergovernmental cooperation fairer wages for workers could be achieved but so far this hasn’t happened.

I freely admit to not being the most conscientious consumer when it comes to doing my weekly shop, particularly the week before payday when 2 for 1 offers often override ethical buying, but for some time now I’ve bought Fair Trade tea and coffee. However, my visit to the tea estate and subsequent research has made me realise that I have an additional responsibility as a consumer to question what that Fair Trade label actually means, who is receiving that money and what are they doing with it.

As for Harrods, I’ve already begun to pen my proposal letter, “Namanas Mr Al Fayed, Chairman of Harrods…regarding your ‘picked exclusively for Harrods tea,’ I would like to propose that 10% of the profits from this tea go towards setting up the Kurseong tea estate workers’ retirement fund…”

References and further reading if you’re interested:

UK Tea Council: www.tea.co.uk

Fairtrade International http://www.fairtrade.net/

Plant Cultures http://www.kew.org/plant-cultures/plants/tea_production__trade_fairtrade_tea.html

Fair trade minimum pricing: http://sarahbesky.wordpress.com/