Good Food and a Heated Debate

It is night here and I just ate a delicious dinner of masala dosa at Vaishali's on FC road. It is nice to break off pieces of the crusty bread and scoop up some coconut, spiced potato and peas and then dip everything in the curry (in Southern India, the curry is watery, but very flavorful). It is so fun to eat everything with my hands. At school, in the Refractory, for thirty rupees, my tray is loaded with rice, some sort of grain, two sauces and three chapati. For the rice, I pour the yellow dhal on top and blend everything together with my fingers. Eating here is so tactile, like everything here, the experience seems deeper, more layered. The fruit salad here is the most wonderful thing. Sometimes, when the construction across the street wakes me up at four in the morning, I think about this fruit salad, so sweet, so perfect. I suddenly become less tired and I get out of bed, ready to make a breakfast that will assuage my desire for this fruit. I make oatmeal and add bananas, figs, raisins, a drizzle of honey, and the milk that tastes like cream. I think my favourite places to eat are still the Goodluck Cafe with its Rumali Roti which they make on a big convex skillet (it is amazing to watch, kind of like a pizza-crepe) and a restaurant that sells paratha with a spoonful of ghee on top that slowly melts over the hot dough. 

Rumali Roti

                                          

I visited the old library on campus for the first time today. I arrived at 8:30 and the door was locked so I sat on the steps and read for a while…Dostoevsky in India. Tall women with pots filled with squares of grass balanced on their heads and bright saris walked by, a man swept around my feet, another swept the stairs. So many people doing so many specific jobs, sometimes it seems that jobs are invented to create the illusion of employment. Do there really need to be six people working in the English Department Office for example? There are only two desks. There is a man in the building whose duty seems to be to replace the chalk and serve chai. But back to the library steps, at 9:30 two women came with buckets of water to wash the steps and they shooed me away. I wandered down the dusty road and found a tree to sit under for a while. Back to The Underground Man, maybe not a book to be reading in the heat. The library opened an hour later and I had to leave my bag behind the counter. There are no plugs, so there was no need to bring a computer.  There is a room on the right full of wooden tables and chairs, with a kind of balcony around the top. The tables are dusty upstairs, but it is so quiet and cool inside, I find that I never want to leave.

In my alternative literature class today, a man from Iran asked the Professor a question, or rather stated a statement that began a heated discussion that fascinated and alarmed me. We were talking about Butler’s Performativity and he raised his hand and said, “but Sir, it is a fact that men are stronger than women.” I cannot remember how this related to anything in the theory of Performativity, perhaps I cannot see the link because of my rather overly-conventional mind. In fact, I don’t understand the thought processes that guide most of what this student expresses, but anyway, he stated this sentence with a questioning lilt. The Professor stared and then asked if he meant it ironically. “No, sir. History shows us this. And with me for instance. I can pick up two girls, but no girl in this class can pick up two men.” The girls began to talk about childbirth, some told him of women from their village who could carry two children, bundles of wood and buckets of water all at once. The man scoffed, only a few kilos. Our professor still was trying to show us that this student was having trouble expressing what he actually meant, his point must actually be more nuanced, we were all just missing it because of the language barrier. He said, “do you actually believe this or are you just trying to play devil’s advocate?” But no, this man looked at him earnestly and said, “I believe it sir, it is a proven fact, men are stronger than women.” The professor made some statement about how he thought several girls could bash him up, and the student chose another tack. “Not just physically, mentally too!” Now the girls in the class began to shift. I have talked with this student before, he is impeccably polite and soft-spoken, with kind eyes, and he truly wants to understand how the world works. I felt sorry for him as chaos began to break out. “Yes, sir, can I bring in my snake and keep it in my pocket for next class” he asked. I couldn’t contain a burst of laughter, “a snake?” “Yes” he turned to me, “if I have a snake in my pocket you will be scared, but the boys will not.” Again the professor said, “you can convince me if every boy is willing to keep the snake in his pocket.” All the boys began to protest. “But sir, girls are afraid of a butterfly” the man said. “That is not true, all of this is received information from somewhere, handed down to you, you must question it” said our professor. “Women are just as capable, strong, and intelligent as men, differences are social constructs.” “I am not saying that women cannot do things,” the student said, “they walk and talk…” after this I could not catch anything that was said, some of the counterarguments were terrible, some were passionate and convincing…I had never seen anything like it. How exciting to see views debated like this, a person’s perspective openly admitted amongst a group of people he knows will disagree. He really did want to understand, he listened carefully, but in the hall after class he came up to me. “I could lift you up with one arm” he said. 

One Billion Rising March: So Empowering!