Arranged marrages and other stuff

It's raining here. Indian people are baffled by this--rain in the middle of the dry season? Unheard of. It's a little chilly too. A nice break from the heat, which is about to come and kick my ass. But it is increasingly clear to me that human activities on this earth are messing with the weather patterns in a much more dramatic, noticable way than is comfortable to think about. Since I know people read this blog, let me just say that I think in another 20 years, a huge chunk of the earth (the part near the middle) will be uninhabitable, due to extreme heat and wild, intense hurricanes. Instead of a major bird flu epidemic, the earth itself is going to put our population back in check.

There are three students my age living in the room next to me in my home stay--they are tenants of my host family. However, I am forbidden from going in their room and hanging out because of the overly-strict rules governing discourse between the sexes here (two of them are girls). My auntie (host mom) hates the girls, apparantly because they were friends with her son, who was then living in the room I am living in, and has since gone to Delhi. It is quite uncouth and unseemly for unmarried youth of opposite sexes to spend much time together. On May 11, this girl who lives next to me will have an arranged marrage to a policeman from Delhi. She is terrified of it, and I am sad about it because I know the extraordinary prevalance of domestic violence in this society. I don't know that he will beat her, but he's a cop in delhi. He will be rich, because policemen make a lot of money on bribes, but she hates that idea. Of course she has never met him, and will not until she marries him. It's her dream to be financially independant (actually, to get rich) and to move to America, and I've never felt so strongly that someone's dream to get rich was increadibly noble.

I think that this system which governs sexual conduct here inherantly encourages violence against women, for many reasons. Women are quite literally property, especially in light of the dowry, which is supposed to give the man financial incentive for taking on a wife as a dependant--of course she will not make any money. If the dowry isn't big enough, she will not find a husband, no matter how wonderful she is as a human. Also, because of these social moreys that forbid men from being friends with women, women are completely alien to them; the only vocabulary for social interaction is masculine, and steeped in testosterone and violence. They have no means of communicating with each other. Because divorce is not an option, Indian women continue to bear immense amounts of violence every day in silence.

I came here full of reasons to dislike my own culture, and there are many many ways in which our culture could and should learn from traditional Indian culture. Everyone should study hindu philosophy, for example. And clearly, instead of using paper and styrofoam cups for our Starbucks coffee, we should use those little clay cups that you can just throw on the ground. They get re-fired every day. amazing. And Neem sticks are amazing to clean your teeth. But I could never ever imagine having an arranged marrage looming in my future. It would suck the life out of life. I don't even understand why my host brother tries to look handsome all the time and lift weights--he's not allowed to have a girlfriend, and he'll have his wife chosen for him, so why bother being attractive?

Mary and Fred asked me how India smells, which is absolutely the right question to ask and I haven't posted about it. I thought maybe everyone would like to know how India smells. It actually smells good, which is bizzarre becuase it smells like burning trash and cowdung. (that's how they deal with trash here. Throw it in the street and set it on fire). BUt all the smells converge and smell good in an indescribable way, it smells like India--sort of an acrid, baking smell. ALso, street cooking. It's like if you took all the sound in the universe and put it in the same place, it wouldn't be a cacophany, it would be OM. If you took all the smells and stuck them together, it would smell like India. But I've never smelt anything in the States that could compare to it.

Peace
Jed