Slightly Sidetracked

While I was already on the subcontinent, I made a quick trip to Nepal,and just bussed around seeing a few sights before I go to my next “official” stop. I thought I’d share a few photos, in case anyone is interested!

Nepal, at least the very small amount of it I saw, was extremely touristy compared to most of India, but also quite a lot friendlier and less nervewracking, so it was a nice transition in my opinion, even if not exactly all that exotic culturally. Although once you escape the main tourist area of Kathmandu (‘Thamel’), the city streets ooze history. There seems to be at least one ancient temple on every corner (sometimes more like five), red powder from ceremonies sprinkled everywhere, the smell of incense is practically inescapable (though it competes with the smell of the heavily polluted air) and you frequently come across enormous poojas burning in the street.
I’ll also admit, there were also some benefits to the crowds of westerners, though I’m slightly embarassed to say that I think so. A feeling of safety was definitely one. Here is another, in my opinion…

But back to sightseeing…

Northern Exposure

Just some shots of the end of 4 months in India, heading North, where the streets are even dustier, the skyline is dotted with palaces, and, most importantly, the food is much spicier and chapati thicker

Jaipur:

The Rajastani Thali, also the most epically large plate I have ever had in front of me:

It took me this long to get there, but…

On the way to Delhi we stopped at a truckstop – probably not a good place to fill foreign stomachs but I think we (we being my family) that this particular extremely late lunch was one of the best meals of the two weeks they were visiting, and I think it holds up equally well in the past 4 months of my being in India. Definitely the best chapati of all time.

By the way, did you know that the chilies which are such an important part of North Indian food (what is referred to as simply “Indian” on menus throughout India and the world) actually come from the Americas, not India? Point being, the typical Indian cuisine is actually relatively young, when you think about the history of civilization in India. But when you think about how many kings, nations, races and religions all fought and intermingled throughout that long history, it doesn’t seem so surprising that North Indian food is a big messy masala of cultures, tastes and customs. Every state, religion, and individual household had its own way of doing things, and over time these customs have intermingled, and crops have been transported and taken on, to create something that is uniquely Indian, if not 100 percent traditional.
Onward to Delhi…

Being in a place with so much history of mixing (and clashing) cultures, we of course had to visit a Mughali (Indian mixed with Afghan and other parts of the middle east) restaurant – definitely a far cry from the “pure veg” dosa shops of Tamil Nadu

Train food…

The Golden Temple houses a free kitchen (a traditional feature of Sikh temples), where all are welcome to have a meal. It apparently serves something like 70,000 people a day. That is a lot of chapati. (I was too intimidated to go in alone, so I just watched some cooking prep…but the height of the piles of potatoes being peeled and chopped was awe-inspiring.)

Trucks lined up (to spend the night for customs the next day) at the India-Pakistan border:

The border-closing ceremony; essentially a nightly dance-off between two armies nations’ border guards…

Goodbye India! (I’ll be back one day for more dosa…)

Hello, have you met Kerala Cuisine?

Remember this?:

Well, little did I know at the time, that is what is called a “Kerala meal”, basically a plate of traditional Kerala home-style cooking – the apparent popularity of which represents to me just how important traditional cooking styles and ingredients are in this part of India. (Keralan food may actually be my number one favorite thing about India. Sorry Punjabis…)

Besides being irresistably delicious (as in, “yes, I will have fifths on that cabbage thing, thanks….ooh is that more dahl?”), the thing I find especially impressive about the food in Kerala is that it sticks to a few main spices, no matter what’s cooking, yet somehow everything is unique. In particular, coconut (and a lot of it), cardamom, mustard seed, tumeric, and ginger.

(clove and black pepper plants; a small variety of bananas; cardamom pods; coffee berries; ginger harvest in the backyard)
This is a feat of heritage I find especially impressive considering Kerala is one of the spice-growing capitals of the world, including many recently-introduced crop spices that are by no means traditional; the home cooks of Kerala have, for the most part, not succumb to thrills of novelty. Some may call this old-fashioned, but I think it’s something many of us are forgetting to appreciate. It also means that almost every ingredient in the kitchen can grown in one’s own backyard (I doubt there is a single mile-long stretch of Kerala that doesn’t have at least one coconut tree), or purchased from someone who grew it in the same town.

(a dessert offered up at the home of a tour guide (so nice!), made of coconut, jaggery and cardamom, and steamed inside a banana leaf. Also with some coffee – everything came from his backyard.)

Of course look at me talking, I’m sure the minute I get home in a few months time I’ll be trying to recreate the same food, and I’m pretty sure coconuts don’t grow very well in Seattle…and it will probably never taste the same without those freshly hand-grated coconuts or banana leaves to eat from.

The sattvic life; or, how I accidentally joined a cult

Well, I wasn’t sure I would, but I survived a month of Sivananda Vedanta. I’ll start by saying that I would not reccomend this organization unless you are looking for a thoroughly dogmatic philosophy and REALLY like chanting bajans in a way that resembles drunken sailors more than it resembles divine worship. It was intense, though certainly educational. Our daily schedule was as follows:
5:30 am: morning bell
6 am: Satsang (meditation followed by an hour of chanting)
7:30 am: chai
8 am: asana class (teaching practice)
10 am: brunch
11 am: free time
12: lecture (chanting lessons or Bhagavad Gita lessons)
1:30: herbal tea
2: philosophy lecture
4: asana class
6: dinner
6:30-7:45: “karma yoga” (do free labor for an hour)
Insert 2 minute cold shower here
8 – 9:45 : Satsang
(8:30: hopefully sneak out of Satsang to have an hour of free time to relax before falling asleep.)

(here we all are in our uniforms in the Shiva Hall, not listening particularly well to a Bhagavad Gita lecture.)
There is no time for sleep, or personal space, and the swami who gave lectures is apparently going senile, but this is easily written off as enlightenment. But I digress, if you want a real rant, talk to me personally.
I decided to come to the Sivananda ashram to take a course on yoga so I could learn the physical practice better, and so I would actually have a good foundation in the philosophy (which, considering it uses words like “there are 72,000 nadis (astral tubes) in the body”, I find mostly just humorous now). But I was also aware that Sivananda yoga places a good amount of stress on the “proper diet” aspect of the Five Points of Yoga (they have a great cookbook published), so I was eagerly awaiting that part of our education.
I will try to get straight to the point now…
Proper diet includes both how and what you eat; it restricts foods (it is vegetarian, very little salt, no onions or garlic, little spice), fasting for a day or two is promoted, and one should eat in complete silence (you would not believe how many times I heard “OM please eat in silence! Eating is a spiritual occasion, not a social event. OM” in the past month) with reverence for food and the God who created it. Personally, I think a lot of the rules in about food and the body in yoga philosophy come from the idea that the physical world holds us down from unity with the divine so we need to constantly scrub ourselves clean of any trace of animal instinct or natural needs. In theory I actually understand this, within the context of the whole Vedanta philosophy, but it’s still a bit unnerving.
Now, in yoga philosophy there are three types, or “gunas,” much different from the ayurvedic “doshas”. They are Sattvic (pure, balanced, on the path to godliness or enlightenment), Rajasic (over-energetic, argumentative, egoistic), and Tamasic (apparently Tamasic people practice voodoo and black magic and do not listen to rules). Foods can likewise fall into these categories, and at the ashram we were fed only sattvic foods.
Tamasic foods are sour, rotten, or pickled foods, over cooked foods, as well as meat and eggs.
Rajasic foods are spicy, sugary, coffee, tea, fermented foods…basically anything especially pungent
Sattvic foods are: vegetarian, including grains and pulses, some ethically produced dairy,organic fruits and vegetables, calm spices like cardamom, and all these things should be as lightly cooked as possible.
In all honesty, the ashram food is my favorite food I’ve had in India (much of it is just typical Keralan food with a few tweaks.

(popular ashram legend holds that the pink “herbal water” they serve contains herbs meant to suppress “sexual energy”…..)
Apparently, according to the philosophy here, it’s not just the type of food that matters, but all the “karma” that is related to the food. “Ahimsa” (non-injury) is a major part of yoga philosophy, and it includes humans, our selves, the environment, and animals. So if there is any hidden cost to a food item it technically should affect the energy and karma we assimilate into our bodies. Ironically the ashram’s food is not organic, and a lot of the products they sell at the “Health Hut” (snack shop) are super processed (like “cheese product” slices) and just purchased at the big supermarket in the nearest city. But that is just one of many hypocrisies, so I think the idea is to take what we learn and apply it ourselves, regardless of how an ashram (basically a business in this case) is run.

It’s interesting to ponder – think about how your body and mind feels after different types of meals. In some ways I think there might actually be something to this three gunas of food thing; I was speaking to a woman from the North of India who pointed out that up north life moves faster and people are much more agressive, and that North Indian food is famous for nothing if not for it’s spiciness and more frequent acceptance of meat. Although it’s likely also relevant in understanding the South Indian food/yogic lifestyle link that the two Swamis to whom this organization is dedicated were born and raised in Kerala.
Really though, in the end, I think the takeaway message was that what is truly important is being conscious of the impacts of your choices in life, and revering, enjoying, and being thankful for your food.

* a note: for all my complaining, I met some really great people – everyone in the course was amazing and friendly and made the experience worth it. Also, after vising the famed Amritapuri ashram, Sivananda seems like heaven on earth.

Better in Goa

So say the shirts and bags at souvenir shops, anyway…

Heading further south, I spent New Years in Goa (the state south of Maharashtra), which, if you ask me, hardly counts as India. The whole state (at least along the coast) is basically a giant beach resort filled with Brits, Germans, and Russians (well, not entirely, but mostly) looking for a tropical getaway. It almost might as well be the Caribbean or Mexico based on the architecture and the palm trees and the Westerners sunning themselves on white sand beaches (while being gawked at by male Indian tourists – this is really an issue that made the tropical vacation much less fun than it ought to be, but at least the locals try to chase these guys off). There is a reason for this, though; Goa was under Portugese control until 1962. It is mainly Catholic (there are nativity scenes everywhere – a bit bewildering in India) and the majority of the buildings are old Portugese colonial houses. Now, I’m basically just on vacation, but along with my photos, a note on the food: being on the coast, one of the main attractions is the fresh seafood that you can eat on the beach cooked in a Portugese-inspired style (whole grilled with a blend of red Indian spices inside). Being a Catholic state, vegetarianism is much less prevalent, and fish is especially important (apparently in Gujarat, where most people are vegetarian, fish is MUCH cheaper – but just as good – because it sells so poorly!) So there is a nice healthy industry of small-scale fishermen and little restauarants lining the beach grilling up seafood.

(above: dinner on the beach. Below: some of the day’s catch being dried in the sun (to save for later!))

It’s worth noting if you come to Goa that most restaurants do Goan food really well, but really are not so skilled at the North Indian food that they feel obligated to put on the menu – something I find interesting since in most other states the good restaurants tend to serve food from other parts of India. I guess the fact that the economy mostly relies on tourism means that the restaurants are best when they serve the local cuisine. Of course if you manage to have lunch at someone’s home, it’s even better.

I also got to go to the market with the woman who authored a cookbook I bought, and she gave me recipes to cook loofah and okra, so I picked some up at the local market. Apparently everything is in season basically all the time in this climate!

(above: a kind of berry that is similar to black pepper – used in the local variety of coconut curry; young coconuts and some strange kind of fruit; vegetables, on the right is a sort of fern used as a vegetable in local dishes)

(above: making puri; kids selling onions; cucumbers!)

(above are two things I saw that I think are really cool. The first is where you go to buy chicken. They get the chicken from out back where they live, weigh it live, kill it about 10 feet away and then pluck it and cut it however you want. Reason I think this is great: you know exactly what you’re getting, where it comes from, how it was treated, AND if you’re eating meat it’s good to recognize that an animal gave its life for that dinner! And the other is a shop where people bring their whole grains (wheat, millet, rice, etc.) and have it ground to their preferred coarseness depending on personal preference and what they plan to cook.)

And a few more shots:

(above is this odd local new years tradition where people make an “old man” effigy representing the past year. Kids stand by the road asking for money to “save the dying old man” – surprisingly, everyone actually gives them money… – and then at midnight all the “old men” are burned in bonfires. Some guys plopped this old man down next to our dinner table, and it was strangely reminisient of Weekend at Bernie’s…slightly disturbing)

Making Farming Work

Back in Pune (it was just too cold in Dehradun!), I found out that my hosts from my last visit actually have two different agriculture projects going on! They are very cool projects, if I were them I would have been bragging all the time. But anyway, now that I’ve come back for a few days I got to go visit each of the farms.
The first was started in the 70s for, it seems, two reasons. It was created as a trial project to see how water use could be more efficient (conserving water and creating agriculture in typically dry places simultaneously) and fairly distributed (in Environmentalist speak this is “water democracy”). Sucess of the project in villages meant that it would actually be labor and cost effective to continue farming, which helped slow the exodus from the countryside (people from the village had moved into the city and were set to work by the government literally breaking stones for lack of other employment). The founder of the project wrangled up some engineering students, did a bunch of surveys on what would be needed in different villages, convinced the government to give some test land (which of course was some dry sloping land that no one wanted, got funding from a charitable organization, and set to work setting up the water project. What resulted was basically a big dam to catch water at the bottom of the slope during monsoon season, and trees to keep the soil in place during the same monsoons. It added a huge amount of available water to the village farmers, and was distributed to them based on water for 1.5 acres per person in the family (the estimate of how much land a single person could work on an organic traditional farm),assuming the recipient agreed to not grow water intensive cash crops like sugarcane. So the associated farms now grow food crops that people in the area use in everyday cooking (wheat, tomatoes, greens, etc), and what they don’t use themselves they sell in Pune or Mumbai.
The organization has its own farm, which is what I visited. There they basically research what kind of plants they can grow using little water, making compost, and how to retain water in a very dry climate (I think there was some mistranslation, but I was told there has been no rain all year).
(sorry for the bad photos, I forgot my camera so all I had was a phone…)

(naturally growing neem trees)

(the water reservoir)

(millet, a traditional grain that uses way less water than rice or wheat)

(compost!)
The most basic thing I took away from this is that even in areas where people don’t think the land is useful, making local agriculture difficult, there are many innovative (and environmentally friendly) ways to create jobs and provide food all over (without GMOs or chemicals!!)

The second place I visited leaned more towards the permaculture side of things. It is the pet project of this lovely older woman who is interested in keeping agricultural communities alive, and popularizing organic growing methods and not using too much water. She has all kinds of crops growing, and almost entirely in mixed crop fields (which is great because the crops give and take different nutrients to the soil, so you get more variety and don’t need to treat the soil as much.) She is also an adamant mulcher – leaving old leaves, coconut husks and weeds (pulled up) on the soil to keep as many nutrients in the soil as possible, and to help with water retension. She seems to not yet have found a great market for her crops though; she said it is probably because not many people are aware of organics, and anyway organic produce tends to be more expensive. But in any case it is a great model farm and there’s a lot of variety of produce on a small patch of land.

(taro field; chiles drying in the sun; my host explaining the various crops; wheat fields with papaya trees; mixed crop of millet, chickpeas and sugarcane)

I also learned a lot of random facts, but one thing I thought was really cool was how even “weeds” are useful in Indian cooking, or in Ayurveda. Many of the weeds are used as green vegetables, have religious significance, or make nicely scented shampoo. This leads me to believe that Indian cuisine and tradition makes for the perfect backdrop for introducing more permaculture methods, because then you actually like most of the weeds!

(a weed that is edible and is also used as an offering to Ganesh; wild tomatoes that pop up on the sides of fields; flowers planted with crops acting as a natural pesticide; apparently the chiles on the bush that grow upwards are spiciest)

And of course who could go out to the countryside without some homemade snacks and a picnic lunch?

24 hours in Delhi

Most often when people talk about the time they spend in Delhi when visiting India, it is accompanied by a heavy sigh, or at least an eyeroll. I was really expecting to spend my time in Delhi by hiding out in a mocie theatre watching Desi Boys to just completely avoid the place. But I’m glad I did not do that (although I still do want to see that movie…). In one day in the city I think it is safe to saythat Delhi is where the contradictions of India really show – New Delhi and Old Delhi, one with wide (and surprisingly clean) streets, the other a series of narrow passages and teeming with people (and trash. Bicycle rickshaws on the roads and the cleanest metro I’ve ever seen underground. It is, contrary to what I expected, a pretty incredible place. Delhi was on many respects the India I was expecting before I got here or had any idea what I was getting myself into. One thing Delhi has that I had yet to see (and kept trying to find) was a huge old street-turned-spice market. Which was…incredible – you can smell it from 5 blocks away. And slightly terrifying – you basically get pulled along in a current of bodies, and if you want to stop have to fight your way into the miniscule amount of standing room in the shops.

(this was a very exciting place for me, hence the dorky grin…)

Spices are really an odd thing, if you ask me, to talk about when thinking of local food. On the one hand, spices are incrediby important for distingushing regional, and even individual, variation of cooking. India as a nation – since as long as the Occident has been in contact with it, I imagine – has been famous for its spices. But oddly enough the place where this El Dorado actually exists is quite far from where spices are grown in India (mostly in Kerala, fyi). With the spices we can still talk about national local foods, but not really regional.

One thing I think would be interesting to research more (though I have not delved into this as of yet) is how the domestic spice trade has affected its social and political (and culinary, of course) development throughout India’s very long history. Particularly because the spice market was in a markedly Muslim part of town, I assume there is a very long history of spices and immigration and cultural mixing. I’m going to need to find some food historians (or books…) to see what I can find on that.
What this has me thinking about is what I said a while back about traditions (how in Kerala the traditions led to using a lot of local ingredients. But really, if traditional North Indian food uses spices from the South, how far back do we need to go to find a cuisine with truly local ingredients? (and would we really consider it “cuisine”?) This is leading me to think more about how silly, or at least culturally a bit sad, “eating local” might really be if it’s followed to intensely. (Unless you’re hunter-gatherers….) What do we gain and lose as the acceptable window of where food comes from narrows? I do still believe that it is ridiculous to fly grapes from Chile to New York in December (eat some pears, people), but is there some kind of healthy compromise?
Well, I don’t actually have an answer to that question right now. So, for the moment all I can leave you with is those thoughts that are now simmering in my brain, and some pictures that can do no justice to the experience of this place.

(that last one is from a totally different part of town, but I had to include some textiles!)