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Song of India - VIII - Santiniketan, part 1 Santiniketan is Tagore’s school about one hundred miles north of Calcutta. He based it on the ancient Indian tradition of a forest hermitage or ashram. He founded it in 1901 with five boys and five teachers, among them his own small sons. He wanted them to learn in a natural setting unlike the prison-rooms of his own youth. Therefore they learned in the open, under the trees. They also studied in their native tongue, Bengali, rather than in the English fashion foreign to their native ways. Thus the school was founded on the tradition of learning in the native tongue and in natural ways. The land was that originally owned by Tagore’s father. Over the years Santiniketan grew until today it includes a college, where students come from all over India. It includes studies in the languages and arts, music and dancing. After Tagore’s death it became a state school with Nehru as its head. It symbolizes the rebirth of Indian tradition in education. Rabindranath and his friend, who had been my hosts in Calcutta, took me to the train. His friend brought a flower for me and I was touched by his thought as I held it. I waved goodbye to my two friends as the train started north. Santiniketan is Tagore’s school about one hundred miles north of Calcutta. He based it on the ancient Indian tradition of a forest hermitage or ashram. He founded it in 1901 with five boys and five teachers, among them his own small sons. He wanted them to learn in a natural setting unlike the prison-rooms of his own youth. Therefore they learned in the open, under the trees. They also studied in their native tongue, Bengali, rather than in the English fashion foreign to their native ways. Thus the school was founded on the tradition of learning in the native tongue, and in natural ways. The land was that originally owned by Tagore’s father. Over the years Santiniketan grew until today it includes a college, where students come from all over India. It includes studies in the language and arts, music and dancing. After Tagore’s death it became a state school with Nehru as its head. It symbolizes the rebirth of Indian tradition in education. Rabindranath and his friend, who had been my hosts in Calcutta, took me to the train. His friend brought a flower for me and I was touched by his thought as I held it. I waved goodbye to my two friends as the train started north. The countryside remained flat, and even became a little deserty and barren, with some sugar cane and rice along the side. The train switched once, and then on to Santiniketan, my destination. I got off the train and looked for the bicycle carts they would be there. There they were, a whole fleet of open two-wheeled buggies pulled by bicycles. They made a kind of triangular affair with the bike in front. I got in, put my suitcase and bags around me, and off we started for the school. Where else would the foreigner be going? He was very pleased at his fare. We passed thru a little town with a few open shops and stalls, and then on to the open, dusty road. There were occasional goats and people as we went along, and a group of houses and tea stall half way. It was about two minutes from the station to the campus. Pretty soon there was a neat low adobe house, a clean tan color, on the horizon – a building of the school. It looked different that the old, dingy buildings we had passed. I wasn’t sure where to go and my cycler knew no English but he took me to the guest house. We pulled up in front of a neat, fairly large one story bungalow set in the flat, open space all around. The gentleman could speak English and he greeted his foreign arrival. He put me in a large room with a couple of wooden beds covered with netting. The room was clean and bare with no decoration of any kind, the same large bare cement rooms everywhere. Soon a lovely tray appeared with an inviting dinner on it, and I felt welcomed and comforted in what was to be my new home. Everything was leisurely at the new school, and I stayed in the guest house a couple of days. There was no hurry about anything. A teacher might be in his office or he might not be, and no one seemed to be pressing to get arrangement completed, in spite of the fact I had arrived over two months late. It was warm, and the girls wore only saris, and the boys mostly shirts and pants Western style. So often in India it is so – the men Western but the women invariably in their beautiful saris. The long skirts give the dignity of women, and everywhere they seem grown-up and mature. There is beauty that cannot be found in the West. And the grace and dignity become their women. Not that there isn’t laughter, but there is a basic quality of womanhood that is shorn in the short skirts of the West. So the girls in their beautiful saris decorated the grounds, and clusters of them stood talking here and there, always in groups. They seemed too shy to be alone. Occasionally they would be talking to a boy, but usually with each other. Groups of students sat here and there outdoors under the trees, for it was Tagore’s original idea to have all classes outside under the trees, and eliminate the iron bars he hated as a child, and bring closer the mind to its natural habitat. So most of the classes were outdoors, eliminating the necessity of many buildings, and the campus remained simple. Simplicity and naturalness were the element of this school. Farther over yet were the girl’s dorms. Altho there were a few scattered smaller houses, most of the girls lived in the dorm. One entered thru the door of the main building, where after men were forbidden, and on thru to the courtyard formed by the four buildings. The large courtyard was of the same brown ground everywhere, and had a few buses along the paths, and a tree here and there. In the center were lines filled with the colorful saris of the girls, blowing in the breeze. How colorful they looked! In the very center was covered square cement platform that the girls sat on and around, talking and taking the sun. It was a real woman’s courtyard come to life. How exciting! How real! It was not until later I lived here and became part of this wonderful romance. At first I lived over further in the little houses for foreign girls. It turned out that for the time being I was to live with the foreign students. On one edge of campus, far away from the buildings but close to the second guest house, was a small house for foreign girls. Several other houses for faculty wore also nearby. Here I met the other girls. There was one girl from Poland, one from Japan, one from Germany, and one from France. They were good friends. Mitsu from Japan had been here two years, but the other girls had come in summer. Walla told me her tale. “Be here July 15”, they had told her, and with German precision she arrived all the way from Europe only to find she was the only one there. It was still summer. The next student didn’t arrive until August, two weeks later. And classes didn’t begin until September! Gradually, one by one, the students filtered in. Nothing broke the leisurely pace. And what was my surprise to find the Tagore class I had specially come for had not begun yet, and it was the middle of November! They especially started it early for my sake since I wouldn’t be there long. How glad I was that I had stayed in Madras and not cut off my visit. I was not late. So I listened and learned the wonders of this land. The food they said was a problem. All of them had tried the kitchen and found it lacking. The Bengali food was not so hot, but it was the surroundings and service. One look at the big slop buckets they served from was enough, they said, and many things I found out later. So Mitsu and Walla cooked for themselves, but Polla stoutly defended the system. She was the most Indianized of them all and wore a sari. She was the girl from Poland. She had also learned Hindi before she came, and could speak with the students. She was only now learning Bengali, the local tongue, but still had a great advantage in speaking and learning. I admired her. She ate in the kitchen and liked the food, tho she agreed the service as poor. She too supplemented the diet with cans and tins bought from the store in Calcutta. So I decided regretfully to cook for myself, at least for a while. There was only room for four. Each had a large room with the same plain walls, like cement. They had a bed and chairs and table they had fixed up. Next to it was a small kitchen room of the same material, and a Western style toilet portioned off of it. It had to be flushed by pouring a pan of water in it. The kitchen consisted only of a small cement shelf along one side, and sink. The rest they had improvised. On the shelf they had a small circular kerosene stove that operated by lighting a ring of wicks. That was for cooking. Water had to be carried from a spigot outside and stored in a tall unglazed orange crock that kept it cool. The bottom of the jug was round so crockery chips were placed in a circle around it to keep it from tipping over. They could be gotten inexpensively at the market they said, and they would help me buy these things. Contrary to Indian custom each had decorated her room so it was cheerful and gay. Walla had straw decoration around the wall, some of which she had made herself. Natsu had been here longest, and had collected more things. She had a large coffee table in front of the bed, and had made a trunk into a table. She managed to cook Japanese food, starting with the rice, and finding bits of things either here or at Calcutta to go with it. Tho it was forbidden, she cooked dinner three times a week for a Japanese boy student here, and managed in this way to help him survive, and enjoy home food. She had baskets of carrots and vegetables and little tidbits that looked inviting. Nevertheless under the best of circumstances and preparation and devising, cooking was monotonous and difficult. I hated to buy the canned things and milk powder and fruit and niceties from home, yet to a certain extent did it. Even then, one could never be certain if the store would have things – any kind of vegetable or not, for example. An Indian meal takes hours to prepare, from one flame, and the wife spends most of her day cooking. After the rice is done, only to prepare one more dish, like dahl, seemed like a luxury, and one felt one had prepared a meal. And since food wouldn’t save in the heat, nothing could be saved and each day began again at the beginning. That meant too not just cooking the rice but picking out all the tiny stones too. Far from prepared food, even the first steps had to be done. Thus were the constant and nagging difficulties of food. It was a never-ending problem, and only to get something in my stomach and forgot it became my aim. To prepare a meal was a rare luxury. The four girls had an arrangement whereby they shared dishes and thus had more of a variety. Since I was more apart from this, living in a separate house, I gave up on eating. Even monotonous meals were difficult to prepare and not eating was a problem too. It became a problem above all others. Even a simple meal or pancakes must be started from the beginning. What a problem! At first they burnt on my stove. There were no skillets. At the market however I noticed the round metal sheet of their balance scales, one on each end, and got the bright idea of cutting them off the strings and using the round sheets for skillets. It worked except it got too hot and burned the cakes. So I put one sheet on top of the other and with the layer of air in between achieved the right temperature of my skillet. It looked funny, the round grey metal circle with the holes along the edge for the string. This was the solution to only one meal accomplished. One of the delightful and delicious things was the white curds, sour or sweet, which were brought by the curd man. Each day he set two of the ting pottery bowls on the window sill and collected at the end of the week. Besides this I ate mostly rice, pancakes, dahl, and eggs. There was a tiny store nearby with supplies, and once a week we took a tonga to town and bought supplies at the market place and a larger store. I had one side of a little house meant for guests, but since it was not full I was put there. It was much like the other girls’ with one large room and bed, and a cement shelf beside a sink in a tiny closest-like kitchen. There was a Western-style toilet off to the side. I too bought a crock and stove and set up housekeeping. That evening Mr. Chanda came over. He was the one I had written from Japan and became my Indian father. He was a rather plump, pleasant-looking man, tho very masculine. From the first he looked after me to see if I were settled and how I was doing. I needed blankets for the cool nights and nothing would do but I must borrow some till I had a chance to buy some in Calcutta. He looked after me like his own daughter. He worked in Srinikitan, the industrial part of the school, and caught a bus each day to the tiny community about two miles. That evening I visited his home only a short way down the path. He called his home Kajalsree, meaning black, after Kajul his oldest son. It was a bungalow built on the edge of a slight hill and had a thatched roof in typical country style. One entered a wooden gate, past the well, and a few steps onto the porch. The porch was long and wide like a verandah. He greeted me and we sat on the porch on chairs around a small table. He introduced his wife and twin daughter and son seventeen. There were vines creeping up around the pillars and the whole had an overgrown effect. Here he entertained me, and it was not till much later I entered the house. He was a gracious host and served tea and cakes, homemade. His daughter served us. His wife stayed inside and never sat with us. Mr. Chanda was quite a person. It was some time before I got his full story although I was always asking him questions. “Oh I rarely talk about myself and these things,” he would say. He had been one of the biggest engineers in Pakistan, building roads and bridges. Just before the partition in Pakistan he was starting to build an 18-room home worth millions of rupees. But then his life was threatened due to his activities and the fact that he was Hindu, and he was warned to leave at once. He left that night, so quickly that he could draw even a penny of his fortune from the bank and barely escaped over the border. A month later he sent for his family and flew them out. Thus he had come from wealth to the bungalow at Santiniketan. He had had many other offers but he believed in the school and so here he worked for the bare minimum of lodging and a small stipend, like a dollar-a-year man. Thus were the contrasts in his life. Mr. Chanda was very idealistic and had been active in the freedom fight for India as had so many patriotic Bengalis. He had spent eight years in prison in the fight! From his childhood he carried secret messages and was watched and trained to see if he could be of service in the great fight. He proved worthy and of great courage. When he was young there was an epidemic and he helped nurse and care for the sick. “Weren’t you afraid you’d get it?” I asked. “Oh we didn’t think that way,” he said. “We just had that spirit.” He remarked that he d didn’t see that spirit in the youth today however, and I didn’t see it in his son. He told many stories of how he evaded his pursuers when they were searching for him. For a year he had lived in the marsh delta region at the mouth of the Hoolighy River. He moved from village to village every few days. There were many thieves and bandits and he even persuaded some of them to give it up. Finally however he was captured and spent eight years in prison. He told stories of hapless Bengali boys wantonly killed by the British, and stories of persecution. In jail when they threw food to him he said they threw food to him like a tiger! That to me spoke the man. Not like a poor trapped animal but like a wild tiger! Not to feel hurt, but dangerous and powerful. This was the spirit of Mr. Chanda. I loved to listen to his stories. Soon I started classes. I had two, one in Bengali and one about Tagore. Then Bengali class met several times a week in the evening. You used a primer written by Tagore himself. It began with the sounds of the alphabet, with verses written under each especially using each sound. It was written in Bengali. Then it advanced to longer verses. The pamphlet was decorated throughout with his own drawings, like woodcuts. At the beginning of each lesson was a handsome picture. There was no English in the book. One had to try to remember all the words. The teacher was a young man and had a deep, resonant voice. I loved to hear him read the Bengali. He was the caretaker of the guest house nearby. He was very patient with us as we gradually learned the alphabet and other words. We studied indoors as it was evening, and there was a large table in the center of the room we sat around. And there were electric lights. All the buildings had lights. It was not nearly so primitive as Sevagram. My main study was Tagore. It was the centennial of the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and a new library of all his works, and biographies, and everything written about him had just been completed. It was here I studied and read most of the day. Of course I was limited, knowing only English. The majority of the works were in Bengali. But it was a treasure house. It was a handsome building, with more the feeling of a monument. It was set in the garden near the large Tagore home. There was a short flight of steps leading up to it where one removed one’s shoes to enter. The floor inside was marble, and the whole had an atmosphere different than the ordinary buildings. At the back of the main entrance hall was a large picture of Tagore standing, as he might have been in the garden itself. Below was a familiar verse of his. To the left was one of the main library rooms with shelves of books and periodicals about Tagore. There were also a few offices downstairs. In one of them worked a man who had just completed an enormous, two-volume work on Tagore. It was in Bengali. Each day he came to collect articles and clippings for his file. Upstairs was a collection of Tagore’s art. At the age of seventy this poet, dramatist and dance creator turned to art, and began the thousands of paintings he completed before eighty. Here I read many articles about Tagore from famous people all over the world. My Tagore teacher was Bengali and if anything was more intensive about Tagore’s works than the author himself. He had known Tagore and admired him greatly. He never tired of the resonant R’s and rolling vowels of the Bengali, and often read to us from the original for the music of the piece. He loved to do it. He was a wonderful teacher. Only bout 10% of Tagore’s works had been translated and he said we could not possibly appreciate the richness of variety of all he had done without reading all of them. He told us Chester Bowle’s daughter had been to Santiniketan and before she left she could scan the lines of Bengali and get the proper lyrical feeling. He was very proud of her. Once he gave me a special class in Tagore all by myself on the porch of this home. He told me that day how Tagore was like the Indian god Krishna, not forcing, but luring us to beauty with his flute. And I remember how a girl’s eyes filled with tears at the beauty of it on a porch in Bengal that day. He lured us to beauty and goodness by the sheer music of it. I was very fortunate that this was the centennial year, for there were special melas or fairs and special celebrations. The biggest was Posh Nela or December mela, and I was there for it. On the open ground near the first guest house I had stayed at, canvas walls began to be set up. Then tables were placed in front of them for booths. A few special buildings were constructed for exhibits. Then goods and materials of all kinds were heaped on the tables – rugs, blankets, clothes, and all kinds of wares for the kitchen and house. Of course not everyone needed a booth and scores of people up shop on the ground, displaying wares of all kinds, new and used. They squatted in back of them and shouted and bargained with the passersby. One display had various colored beads hanging on a wooden pole. They were the authentic beads of the native Santals of the region. The beads were minute, and various colored strands hung from the pole. The buyer would choose which colors he wanted and how many strands and then they were put together with a red or yellow tassel. They sold for about 2 annas or 2 cents of our money. Then there were food booths of all kinds, both hot and sweets. There were globjamans and other sweets, some brown, some white, and some dipped in honey. All were delicious. Indian sweets are among the best in the world and I found many new ones to sample. The fair lasted about 2 weeks. One of the special attractions was the jatra or fold drama shown nightly. In India a show begins about 10 o’clock at night and lasts until three or four the next morning. It is hard to believe at first. The jatra was set up under a special canopy, with room in front of the stage for people to come and sit on blankets. At night it was very cold and groups of people would spread their blankets on the ground and huddle together. About 12 o’clock it became so cold that most of the audience left, but the wonderful performances continued. The stage was several feet above the ground. There was quite an atmosphere, and most of the plays were about kings and queens and tales out of the Mahabahatra. The actors were gaudily dressed and overplayed their parts in true dramatic style. It was colorful and dramatic. At first I wondered why the women looked so masculine and then discovered that men played all the parts. They did pretty well tho. The jatra was one of the real treats of my stay, huddled there wrapped in blankets in the night, watching the ancient stories. Another of the treats at the fair was the Baool singers. This is a special group of wandering singers and dancers found only in West Bengal. Some of them are religious singers and wear the saffron-colored robes of religious people. They sing and dance and play instruments, and look grand in their robes dancing. Later in the next mela I will tell you more of these fascinating people. About this time I started living with the girls in the dormitory. During the mela my room was needed for guests and I was glad of the chance to live in the dorm. So I moved in. My roommate was a thin, rather plain girl from Calcutta. She came from a well-to-do family there. The school had changed from its inception and now many of the students came from socially prominent families. In fact it was one of the failings of the school under the direction of Mr. Nehru. It had grown, and 2000 students were bound to be less devoted than the handful in the beginning. Thus the school was different than it had been before. Nevertheless the original principle of simplicity held, and the dorms did not have fans for the heat, etc, that they might have. Now many of the girls came from better families and were sent here as a sort of finishing school. For them it was simple living and they rejoiced in it. Each room had two beds and two tables and chairs. The beds were only wooden slats on a low platform and the girls brought their own bedding with blankets for the cool nights. I slept almost on the boards for I had decided not to buy any more bedding. Some of the girls had netting also, but most of us did not. Tagore believed in rising early, and indeed, all Indians do. The original boys arose at 4:30 and had prayers before breakfast. Now the bell rang at 5:30 and the prayer service began at 6:30 with breakfast at 7:00. Not all the girls rose at 5:30 but most did, to go to the service. Then a dash to the courtyard for the prayer service. Everyone gathered near the library and stood facing center. Each day it was slightly different and a different group of boys or girls would sing, and prayers said. It was a nice custom and there was something peaceful and reassuring and refreshing about them. Then the gathering broke up and went to the hall for tea and cakes. After breakfast or tiffin you could see them emerging from the hall door in twos and threes, and swinging thru the gate onto the road. Sometimes a few boys and girls were separate. Some of the girls were so shy they would not venture even to class or dinner alone, and usually they were in groups of two or three or more. But some of them would swing along independently and zestfully. The boys and girls were almost always separate. Even in the outdoor classes the girls would sit on one side and the boys on the other. Even in casual encounters it had an air about it for a boy to stop and talk with the girls, or girls to stop and chat. Usually the girls stayed together. During meals there was one room for the boys and one for the girls. The segregation held even for the adults and at the musical concerts in the new pavilion under the long roof in front of the stage. They were strictly divided down the center by a long rope. Men and boys sat on long rugs on the ground on one side and women and girls on the other – husbands on one side and wives and small children on the other. IT seemed odd, but I guess they considered the attention better this way. The girls were protected from youth, and strictly guarded by their parents and brothers. They were accompanied and chaperoned wherever they went, and the school had strict rules about going out at night. Whether it was the passion is this land, in their faces and luminous dark eyes, or only precaution, it was strictly followed. And it was enjoyable being guarded and cared for in this land. I myself could escape from it and travel alone. Most of them considered the school very liberal. So as one strolled along the campus one saw a truly peaceful scene, of boys and girls sitting under the trees or on the curved benches, listening to their teachers. A few people would walk along the paths. The boys dressed Western, but the men wore long shirts over the draped white cloth. Pretty saris flowed here and there. The favorite was white, with a colorful border. The trees folded over the scene and undulated in the breeze. It was peaceful – Santiniketan. There was never any hurry but always a calm and peaceful tenor. Of course there was laughter and some youthful running, and bicycles. Across from the girls’ dorm was an athletic field where they played badminton and other games. The girls would play in their saris and it is amazing that it really is fairly practical. The yards of fold in the front give plenty of room for action, and the one would think it would be easy to step on the long dresses, once they had gotten used to them they could do anything, even play badminton. Thus there was a colorful and every-varying scene along the brown-yellow earth on the campus. IT was pretty to watch and be a part of. Back in the dorm was where most of the girls would be, usually in the courtyard. There the long saris would be blowing on the ropes for clothes lines and the girls gathered around chatting. No one studied very hard and there was time for leisure. Nothing broke the pace of their life. It was fun to look out my window on the second floor at the courtyard scene below. Always the days were fine, for in my three months it never rained until the end, when the girls went barefoot singing in the rain for the joy of it. Oh, how childlike and lovely they were! It was the Bengali custom to go barefoot. There was no class attached to it and some of the girls did; tho most wore the open sandals or chapels. It was the custom too, in this part of India to wear the hair long or open, tho after marriage they usually wore it back. So the girls would go barefoot, with black hair streaming down their back. It was youthful and lovely. For most of them it was the firs time they had to wait on themselves. The better-off Indian girl still is raised amid servants, and most of them could do nothing when they arrived. It was the first time to sew, or wash their own saris. They seemed quite proud as they took buckets of water down the hall and washed them out. ”It’s the firs time I’ve ever done my own,” my roommate exclaimed. It did seem strange. Coming from a land where supposedly everything was simple and easy, and yet here we did all these things from childhood that were new to them. The better-off Indian lives in far more leisureliness and luxury than me. They have servants. The dormitories had water piped to each floor. The bath consisted of a small cement room with a big common tub of water at one end. There was a tiny shelf. The bather dipped buckets of water over himself for his bath. It was quite cold and the custom is to take the bath first thing in the morning, even before sunrise. But some of us waited until it was warm. Next to the bath were Indian-style toilets with wooden doors and a raised platform with an opening in one corner over which one squatted. Before entering one took a cup of water for rinsing. And after, one flushed it with a large bucket of water from the tub nearby. The water was quite safe for drinking. Finally a deep supply had been tapped that flowed throughout the year. I did not use the tablets anymore or worry about the water. It was quite good. They put the water on during several hours of the day and the large tubs were filled for later use. It was in this space at the end of the hall that the girls would do their washing. Since the floors and walls were cement as is usual, one never had to worry about getting water on anything, and could throw it around as much as one pleased. The water drained out of a hole in the side of the wall, and fell outside below. The hallways were fairly long with wooden doors opening off each side. Here the girls, when hey were not in classes, would lounge on the beds and laugh and talk with each other. They were young and girlish and giggled and played with each other. The talk was usually of small things and boys, but sometimes of studies. Here I lived. After a while we came to a cluster of small trees, and hidden in them was one of the tiny nearby villages. It had a few mud houses, and a tank or pond of water with grasses growing around the edge of it, the same as everywhere in India. There was still water in their tank. It had not yet dried up. We walked down the road through the houses, and on farther to the picnic ground. It was by a stream flowing thru the countryside. How nice to have chosen to picnic by its bank. For once the boys and girls played together, splashing and wading in the water. They kicked off their chapels (the ones who had not walked barefoot) and lifted up their saris and waded in the water. Some of us even went upstream quite a ways where the river forked around a small sand bar. Some of us even went further later in the day, off on the barren land to another nearby village. Tho the plains seem barren and empty actually they are full of villages. India is village – India, and only a fraction of its people live in the cities. Within ten miles of Santiniketan were many villages tho you could not have guessed any existed. The village had rows of mud houses, very neat, and some rice drying in one of the yards on woven mats. It was a small village of perhaps several hundred, the sometimes many people will manage to live in a small cluster of houses where you never would guess so many would fit! The food for the picnic was transported on a great cart – pots and pans and all. It arrived along with three or four cooks. They were experts. They dug out two or three deep holes and make fires in them. Then they put huge pots on them, one for rice and one for dahl and a special curry for today. The pots were about three feet across and made of iron, really gigantic. It was impressive to see such big cauldrons of rice and curry. The students cut the vegetables. They sat on blankets spread under the trees and used the big Indian knives which are a stationary blade sitting upright about two feet tall and curved in mango-leaf shape, wide at the bottom. The vegetables are then cut on it. One keeps all the pieces in one’s hand till they are cut tiny, and then drops them in the pot. So the students sat on the blankets and ct potatoes and onions and all kinds of vegetables for dinner. Next to the pots was a huge board with three piles of ground spices they had brought – one of orange ginger, one of green spices, and one of red pepper. All of it was used. After the food was prepared some of the students played in the river and others prepared to sing. A large blanket was placed under one of the trees and the students of the music school sat with their Indian instruments under it – like Omar Khyyam. Then the other students gathered around. At first the girls were too shy to go over but gradually they were drawn, and a large group sat on the blanket. How they sang! Hour after hour, on and on, under the trees. How lovely it was, and how like magic. And to the music were figures playing with kites in the air by the river bank. How like fairyland, the figures with the kites and the music! Always it will be engraved in my memory. It was like something flung in the air. In later afternoon the food was ready and the feast began. Leaf plates were distributed and some served while other ate. The buckets went around and around with rice and curry and sweet chutney for a treat. Even curds had been brought. We ate our fill and then I noticed how some people and children of nearby villages had gradually crept closer to us while we ate. They knew it was picnic day and were eager to eat what was left. They ate what was left over on the plates and then they gave them the rest, serving them in a little group. After all had eaten we again sang, and the magic returned. I was proud that even some of the village people stood nearby with us, and watched some of the games too. They played games for several hours and then started returning home. Of course everything was not so happy in this paradise – food continued to be a problem. When I was living with the girls we often went to the little store to shop. It was a small weather-beaten shop about the size of a house. On one side were canned goods and rice and flour in gunny sacks, and on the other were hardware and utensils and supplies. The whole was rather dingy and run-down. On the front porch a man squatted selling a few vegetables. There were almost always potatoes and onions, but beyond that you could never be sure if there would be anything for dinner or not. The most common vegetable, surprisingly enough, was cauliflower. Always you felt the scarcity of India. For most people of course, the common diet was rice and dahl, or here in the north chapattis instead of rice. Chapattis were the big round pancake-like bread made from water and flour and then fried in oil. They were the staple diet here. In the store however were all kinds of canned supplies that the foreigners might buy – fruits, vegetables, coca, cookies and powdered milk. You could also buy Indian powdered milk in sacks. A tin of powdered milk would cost five rupees, which was only about a dollar, but the same as five dollars there. It seemed like cheating and unfair when you knew a whole family probably ate for a week on such an amount. However for reasons of health and monotony of diet I finally gave in and bought some of the luxuries. One always took a basket shopping in which to put purchases. Vegetables however were sometimes wrapped in paper. But the paper that was used was old ledger sheets full of writing and figuring of all sorts! Far from Japan where everything was wrapped so prettily and daintily and paper so abundant, tho in the markets things were wrapped in newspaper. And the string so thin it was barely thread. It would just do. In back of the shop was a tea stall and occasionally we would stop and have tea and sweets. About once a week I went with the girls to town to the market for bigger shopping. We would hail a tonga pulled by a bicycle and the driver would take us to market. Occasionally I would ride a bicycle to town and I often wondered what the people thought of the American girl sailing along so buoyantly on her bike. The market was behind some old buildings and was a bedlam of people buying and selling in old stalls and on the ground. It was so crowded you could barely walk over the around the people and goods everywhere. People squatted selling vegetables and fresh spices and fish and meats. Some sold the varicus colors for the red dot on the forehead, and had piles of colored powder for it. One of the most awful things was the meat. In order to prove to you that the goat was fresh, they went along the market holding up a freshly killed goat to prove to everyone that the meat was fresh. We would go along making our purchases, and at first I would stay close to Matsu as she spoke some Bengali with them, and try to learn some of the words as she bargained with them. Typical Indian buying is bargaining, and the price is never stated outright. Then they would place the food on the balance scale with a weight on one end and the food on the other. Altho we bargained like everyone else, Matsu had a kind heart and one day before we left she bought a candy sweet of each of two children in one of the stalls. Tho they were only two annas each, she had heard they practically never got them, she said. So she carried the sweets back to the delighted children. On the way home we stopped at a general supply store for rice and flour. It was a big cement shop with open front. Inside were sacks of different types of rice, and dark ground wheat flour. There were also huge sacks of beans for dahl, some red and some yellow. Other sacks had sugar and salt. On a shelf above were tins of oil. There were also matches and supplies of other kinds. Here we made our purchases which were wrapped in the same ledger paper and tiny string, and loaded them in the tonga which waited for us and rode home. Eating in the school dorm was one of those experiences best to be forgotten. Dr. Ali perhaps best explained it later when he said that dining together in India is a relatively new thing. For centuries each has eaten in his own house, with many rules. |
Carolyn W.