What’s the buzzz this morning? A “måhu-rå båsa”

This morning I go out to join my landlady Sushila and her daughter and our sabzi walla on the front porch to  be met with “ssh, aså. måhu dekhå, aså aså”  ssh, “come, look at the honey bees”.
Overnight our house has a  new addition, the busy bees have built a nest! The hive or “ båsa” is probably about 2 ft across hanging from  the underside of our under construction upper floor roof. Seemingly they were swarming all around when Sushila  first go it up this morning but have settle down now.
I wonder how big it will get, and how long it will stay?

It’s a dog eat dog world…

WARNING!!
This post is not for the faint hearted. Animal lovers be warned!!

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Our nagar, like everywhere in India is full of dogs. Some are actually owned and taken care of by people who live here, others are owned but not taken care of, others are not owned at all.

Sometimes you see them lazing around in the heat, all of them seem to love the piles of builders sand which are to be found everywhere with all the building work that is going on. Other times they are nose down sniffing out food or some scent, scurrying over whenever kitchen waste is thrown out: they are part of the local waste disposal system. At other times they can be running in packs, and howling their heads off.  Mostly they look healthy, but that’s because you don’t usually see the unhealthy ones. I recall a bitch who can to rest in a quite spot by H’s stairwell in Koraput last year around this time, we think she had been attacked by a gang of dogs and was in pretty bad shape, bleeding and festering. At home, you’d take it to a vet and get it put down. Here what can you do? 
Ex-volunteer AM adopted a street dog in Bhubaneswar as a pup and after vet visits, inoculations and a long flight, JB now has a new home in Canada. Lucky lad!  See JB the wonder dog!
(That was the  nice part!)

REPEAT WARNING!!
This post is not for the faint hearted. Animal lovers be warned!!

About a month back, we had a small pup find its way to my landlady’s house, it was tiny and not eating well and not growing. We have no idea where it came from, but it sort of tried to adopt her house as a safe haven. She started to feed it. But the bigger dogs in the neighbouring houses would steal its food. It clearly had lost its mother very young, been thrown out of the nest so to speak, and had not learnt how to interact with other dogs.  In the morning as I left for work it would always try and follow me, and I’d pick it up and turn it back to the house. Over the weeks it was becoming a little more energetic but still it was small for its age, and it was still whimpering every time we would leave the  house.
By this time it could still get under our gate and so escape the chasing from the neighbours dogs who were now all too big to get through. Then the week before  last it started to follow me to work again. Knowing that my landlady had told me only the day before that she had had to chase the neighbour dogs away to get them of it, I lifted him up and turned him back quite assertively so he wouldn’t follow. I walked off as he slumped back to the house. Just up the lane before the corner I looked back to see him beginning to wonder along the lane again. Next thing I knew there was much growling and squeaking, then screams from the young girl who lives in the house across from us. I was too far away to help. The whole story came to light when I got home in the evening. The 3 big dogs, a mother and two of her pups now grown, had begun to chase the small dog.   She had tried to chase them away, by “nicely throwing stones”, then more seriously throwing stones, but to no avail. The little pup stood no chance. he didn’t know how to play., he didn’t know how to say “I’m no threat, you are pack leader” and their biting took on grave consequences.  The smell of the carcass permeated the whole nagar for some days. The pups tore the small carcass to pieces. The smell brought all the big dogs around,  but interestingly none of them devoured the meat. I saw them approach, nose alert, pups barking, trying to stand their ground, but backing off in the face of the elder dogs. They approached, sniffed the carcass, looked at the pups, yelped, and wondered off. By this point I had my camera out…….

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Getting tongue tied over dogs and cucumbers!

Speaking is always so much easier in one’s own mother tongue! Oh yeah? Even there one can make mistakes – English has its Spoonerisms  accidental or deliberate such as saying “A well-boiled icicle"  instead of “ A well-oiled bicycle” .  The deliberate form of this is much used in our humour and to write  such comical turns actually requires a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge.  The English comic Les Dawson had this character who played the piano atrociously: to pull this off as a comedic act actually takes true skill on the piano, hammering just any note in any sequence just doesn’t work, the tune has to be recognisable whilst being as far off key for it to not be – a delicate balancing act! And so it is with intentional word plays. But for us students of a new language it is the unintentional that can often be funny.

I always think that it is my responsibility to understand someone when they are trying to learn and trying to speak my language. In India there are some common mistakes people seem to make when learning English. It got me wondering what the common mistakes are for an English person learning Oriya, Hindi, French, Arabic, Chinese or any other language? Or for say a French native speaker learning Hindi?  Does a French person make the same mistakes as an English person? Does a Chinese? We have a number of Filipino volunteers in India for many English is at least a second language. Are their common mistakes in Hindi or Oriya  the same as mine?  I don’t know. So if there are any linguists and language teachers reading this, or if your mother tongue is something other than English,  how about providing some insight into this question?

Here are some that I have noticed

• clothes and cloths – everybody wears cloths,  no one uses clothes!
• the wind blows as if it were a winding path!
• “How will we do this?” becomes “How we will do this?”

And my classic in Oriya is getting tongue tied on kukura and kakuri, and probably loads more besides that no one has yet corrected me on :)

Deep River by Shusaku Endo

part of my Indian Literature series

The author 

Shusaku Endo (1923 – 1996) was a highly acclaimed Japanese novelist who belonged to the Christian faith and was therefore in a member of a minority in Japan. His writings are all a vehicle for his faith, but even if you are not a believer, his writings in my opinion are always compelling reads, touching pieces of great sincerity and insight into the human condition.

The Book

Deep River (1993) by Shusako Endo

 

My Review

Just as tributaries of a river converge into one , so Endo brings together the spiritual journeys of 4 Japanese tourists as they undertake a tour of India in the last days of the reign of Indira Gandhi.

Numada grew up as a boy in Japanese occupied Manchuria until his parents separation meant his return to Japan. His boyhood love for the puppy he had to leave behind turns him into a writer of stories in which children communicate with animals. In later life he survives heart stopping surgery at the same time as his beloved minor bird dies. SPOLIER - His visit to India culminates in him buying and freeing a minor bird there in gratitude

Kikuchi’s story of how he survives WW2 retreat of the Japanese Army from Burma along the Road of Death thanks only to the actions of a comrade in arms makes quite an impact on the reader. In a mistaken understanding that India is mainly Buddhist, he wants to perform some Buddhist rituals for his fallen comrades and for their enemies because this comrade’s actions had haunted the comrade all his life, leading to alcohol abuse, hospitalization and his eventual death. But not before he received comfort from a European Christian volunteer at the hospital.

Izube’s wife has recently died of cancer. He’s a typical middle class Japanese manager. Throughout his marriage ha has taken his wife for granted and is surprised by her passionate deathbed plea that he re-find her when she is reborn It is this search that takes him to India. His search takes him to remote Indian villages, beggar children and fortune telling charlatans.

Mitsuko thinks she is incapable of loving another. At college she rebelled and led a wild life and now has a failed marriage behind her. At collage she goaded on a young naive boy, Otsu, who she seduces. Otsu is deeply religious and Mitsuko tries to break his attachment to his faith. She fails and he enters the training for the priesthood in France. She encounters him again there during her own honeymoon, and again years later in Varanasi on her India trip. He has been flung out of the seminary for his radical belief in an Asian Christianity but is still strong in his faith and works to ferry the bodies of the dead who have no money to the river and the still living, but dying to the free guest houses of the town where Hindus come for rebirth.

SPOILER - Their stories are tied together by the trip, which comes to its finale through the silly actions of their fellow traveller Sanjo, a young photographer. With backdrop of the murder of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, the tensions of multiple faiths, languages and cultures clash in India itself and within the tourist group. By their actual journey and their spiritual one, each of the book’s characters confront the ambiguities that are Indian culture, its castes and its religious believes, its perception that good and evil are intimately intertwined just as the dead bodies flowing in the Ganges are part and parcel of the same belief system that has people washing on its banks in the hope of rebirth. Each character in their own way finds a moment of epiphany along the banks of the sacred river.

A satisfyingly spiritual read.

Rajasthan (21) – The Birds of Bikaner

When we were in Bikaner in December one of the highlights of the trip turned out  to be our wildlife expedition. Jitu, the man in whose guest house we were staying is a zoologist by training and a great lover of nature. He is very knowledgeable about the local flora and fauna and we took a trip out of town with fingers crossed to see something. We headed towards the local dumping area and caught sight of a tremendous show of vultures and one antelope.
My friend Ken would have loved this and truly been in his element and I am sure he can probably help out here with proper identification – but I am thinking the blue bird above is a Kingfisher, the smaller black and white ones are starlings, and the larger ones vultures and buzzards.  This was truly a spectacular sight – hundred of these very big birds on the ground and in flight. Pictures of bird are difficult, and with no telephoto lens and certainly no steady hand these are the best I have but I hope you can get the flavour of this memorable occasion with these and the video.
           

Rajasthan (20) – Nation Research Centre on the Camel

We took a trip out from Bikaner to the National Research Centre on the Camel, indulging my fondness for these beasts. We arrived just as the adult females were being fed and watered, which meant that we saw the young feeding from their mothers and the staff collecting some of the milk as well. This goes for sale at the centre, but by the time I made it to the stall all the milk was gone, but I did have some ice cream made with camel milk, lovely!

        

Rajasthan (19) – Bikaner family visit

In Bikaner we stayed at The Vinayak Guest House. Our host Jitu was delightful and I’d most certainly recommend staying there, especially if you are interested in wildlife. It is his passion and we spent a great day out and about with him.  He organises camel treks and although we were not going to do one we did go with him to meet the family who have the camels he uses. This is a very traditional family, and the women were veiled. As we were 3 women travelling, Jitu left us with the family and gradually the women open up, relaxed and we chatted as best we could over a cup of tea.  And the old man kindly allowed me too video him putting on his turban!

        

Rajasthan (18) Bikaner market

The market in Bikaner was as markets are, teaming with traffic, human, bicycles, motor bikes, auto-rickshaws and the animal variety, with all the associated sounds and smells, as well as a shop selling paper money for pujas, a man with an incredibly long moustache and to my surprise Aloe for sell to eat. We had it to try one evening and it was remarkably nice.