Vegetarian food does not = healthy

In describing the latest Sufjan Stevens album and tour, Brent and Gena found a post that said it was like eating Thanksgiving dinner and then an hour later eating a steak. The food of Tamil Nadu is somewhat similar - most restaurants are 100% vegetarian - but eating here is like going to the Steele County Free Fair - consuming a blooming onion, then a basket of onion rings, then some deep fried mushrooms and topping it off with a funnel cake. If all of the above were served with the most delicious flavorful sauces you could imagine. Also I beleive my tea consumption will reach addict levels here.

I am writing right now on the grounds of an elementary school in a rural area of tumeric, rice and vegetable farms about half way beteween Chennai and Bangalore in Tamil Nadu. The nearest city, Velore, is about 10 miles away - and I'm about a one-two mile walk from the nearest village. Velore is like Rochester Minnesota, it has one of the best hospitals in India, if Rochester had more neon than you can imagine, cows and autorickshaws in the streets, and an impressive decibel level.

This school, the Ghandi-Mandela-King school was started seven years ago by Ramu, who grew up near here, and a troop of social movement activists and local farmers. It is one of the most wonderful places I have ever been. It is incredibly peaceful, lots of vegetation, surrounded by hills, with cool nights where the fog always takes over the land - and then very hot days.

The children - there are about 150 of them - are wonderful. They start to arrive at 8:30 - sometimes running to see their friends before school starts at nine. The three basic things we all say are 1) Good morning! 2) How are you? Then usually providing the answer "fine!' before I can respond and 3) what is your name? I play with them during lunch - and then again after school while the ones who live in farthering flung villages wait for their turn on the small school buses which drive back and forth. The amazing thing is how quickly they can move from complete discipline to utter anarchy. One minute they are marching parade style in preparation for the national holiday of Pongol this weekend - and the next 10 of them are simultaneously playing a game of trying to put each of their notebooks on my head like a hat. (Which I need - oh the sun here.) Everyone eats with their hands here. And my favorite incident  was being mirthlessly imitated by a five year old about  the way I evidently open my mouth wide and stick out my tongue to capture food from my mouth when I eat. There was much laughter at all that.

I taught 9-10 year olds English yesterday. I told them about Minnesota, how cold it was, how many lakes there are and found out about their brothers and sisters, their favorite foods and favorite colors (universally red and blue). Mad props at this point should be issued here to all teachers in the world. Martha, Mary Cathryn (and children's librarians like Jane Boss) - I am impressed that you survive each day. It was a totally joyful experience - but the possibility for chaos to develop at any moment is impressive. You have to track all of them all the time - when one of them does something - all will follow quickly.

Perhaps the coolest Tamil cultural rite is that every morning many Tamils will create a public art display, now with chalk, immediately in front of their house. This is much more prevelant in the villages and rural areas, and almost everyone does it for holidays like Pongol. It's an incredibly beautiful tradition. That at 5 in the morning, before getting up in the morning to milk the cows or go to the fields people will take the time to make a new intricate symbol to greet people walking by their house.

There are Hindu shrines everywhere. Multiple in this one smalll village. Very complex and beautiful. A more questionable practice associated with these shrines and temples is the blasting of Hindu devotional music from sunset to sunrise. I sleep on the floor in the classrooms miles from the village and all night you hear it - loud but also comforting in a way.

Staying with me here, one of the co-conspirators who put togetherr this school - is a student from Assam named Mirza. Ramu has returned back to Chennai and so Mirza has showed me around this place. He is incredibly interested in social movement politics and especially in the insurgencies in the northeast where he is from. (Note to brother: you have got to meet Mirza - he speaks Naga and five other languages up there - has met with different insuurgent and civil society leaders - and has written articles on the complicated social political issues in the northeast). Mirza is very warm - likes to laugh and talk politics - and appreciates the craziness of the traffic system here in India. Yesterday we took a motorcycle/dirt bike thing into Velore 10 miles away. It was terrifying - thousands of small motorcycles and bikes and huge buses with air horns all within centimeters of you. Luckily Mirza is a good driver with no death wish - but holy s*&t I am impressed that anyone stays alive here. Really though after a first couple of minutes of terror - you realize that there is nothing you can do about it - so you just hold on to the driver and feel very calm. (Maybe with some visualizations...)

This internet connection  is pretty rickety (pretty impressive that it is here at all - electicity only came out here four years ago - and the road was fixed up last year - but is pretty beat up) - so I may wait on email replies until I get back to Chennai next week. Will write more then. Hope all is well with you. Happy Pongol! Peace,

Ryan