River Town Chronicles (14 page)

W
E ARRIVED BACK IN DELHI
aboard the same old wobbly propeller plane. With just a week left before our Indian visas expired, I wanted to return to River Town for a final visit in order to give away our remaining household goods that were still stored in the gunny sack at the doctor's house. I wanted to give half of the goods to Kaga and the other half to the
mochi.

When I arrived in front of our old house in the bazaar, I caught a glimpse of Roshan walking ahead of me with a group of men. They turned into
gali lathmaron ki (the
stick beaters lane,), and I followed them. I caught up with Roshan and the crowd of men just as they stopped in front of a merchant's house. From inside came a god awful wailful sound. Roshan rushed over to me with a distressed look on his face. I asked him what was wrong.
“Do bachee bahut bimar hain”
(two boys are very sick), he said. He said they were brothers, from the same household. I asked him if anyone had called the doctor. Roshan said it was no use. A shaman had already been called to exorcise the demons inside the two boys. But the boys were dying. They had both been bitten by a mad dog. “Rabies,” Roshan stammered. The wailing grew louder. “They will be dead soon,” a man next to us chimed in. “The boys have gone mad.” I asked again if anyone had called the doctor. “Too late, “came the answer. I heard the boys' relatives screaming from inside the house. The crowd outside stood silently, mourning what was occurring inside.

I felt terror and anger. How did anyone expect a shaman to cure the boys? It was only later that I reconciled the deaths of these two boys with the thought that perhaps the shaman was not there to cure the boys, but to offer an explanation to the living of something that was otherwise incomprehensible.

Later that night I heard how the boys had taken in a stray puppy as a pet. The dog had bitten both boys, and before long they both began to exhibit the symptoms of hydrophobia (rabies). No one what knew what to make of the symptoms at first, and by the time they suspected rabies it was too late. I shuttered to think of how many stray dogs in River Town might have had rabies. And how lucky we were not to have suffered a similar fate. It seemed I had come full circle, having arrived for the very first time in River Town to the sight of a rabid dog being bludgeoned to death across from our house in the bazaar. And now, on my final visit to River Town, hearing the agonizing cries of our neighbors whose children suffered such a horrible death.

The next morning I made the rounds of the bazaar for a final time, saying my goodbys to the shopkeepers, the metal workers and the street vendors who had allowed us to live in their midst. I said a special farewell to the
mochi
and to Kaga, who swished her broom at me one last time. I distributed what was left of our household goods to the two of them. Most difficult was saying goodby to
bhabhi
and Ram Swarup and their children, who had been part of our family in River Town. Roshan went with me to the train station, where we said our goodbys and agreed to meet again in the U.S., “God willing.”

I
T WAS EARLY IN THE MORNING
when we arrived at the airport in Delhi for our trip back to the U.S. People were wrapped up in sheets and sprawled out on the floor of the reception area waiting for flights to arrive or depart. From somewhere came an unmistakable voice. “Sahab, Sahab, we have come to see you off to
Amrika.”
It was
bhabhi,
barefoot and dressed in a simple white cotton sari. Her eyes were as bright as searchlights, as she scanned the surroundings in search of some familiar landmark. Ram Swarup, Madhu, Shakti, Mohan, Bhushan, Meena and Paphu straggled in behind her, looking tired and bewildered. I asked Ram Swarup how they had traveled to Delhi, and he said, “by train.” “And then,” he added, “we all—all eight of us—piled into a taxi for the ride from the train station to the airport.”

Bhabhi
picked up Brian and hoisted him onto her hip. Then she said, as if anticipating the questions of the crowd that had gathered around her, “Yeh
hamara chota sahab”
(this is our little sahab), looking into Brian's eyes.
“Chota Sahab
and his family live with us,” but are leaving for a visit to
Amrika.”
This was her way of saying, I suppose, that we weren't leaving for good. We would be back.

We sat down for a cup of tea.
Bhabhi
picked up her tea and raced to the window when she heard the roar of jet engines. She covered her ears, just as she did in River Town when Kaga showered her with insults and obscenities. When finally our flight was announced, there was much hugging, and tears streamed down
bhabhi's
face. We said our final goodbys, and then, just before boarding the plane, I reached into my pockets and pulled out all of the rupees and all the coins that remained there and stuffed them into Menna's and Paphu's hands. I took one final look back and knew at once that a huge emptiness would forever be with us as we left behind all of the pleasures and perils of our life in River Town.

O
UR TRAVEL AGENT IN DELHI
(the same agent who arranged the trip to Kashmir as part of our return ticket) scheduled stops in Kabul and Tehran. We were fortunate to roam around the bazaars of Kabul and Tehran, and to visit the beautiful buildings, mosques and gardens of Kabul before they were reduced to rubble in the brutal conflicts that followed. Landing at the airport in Beirut, with nervous armed guards patrolling the runways, provided a preview of what was to come.

Culture shock set in abruptly, once we arrived in Germany, and then France. Our first encounter with culture shock was in a toy store in Germany. Tim, Brian and Lori immediately set out to sample the toys with wheels, riding them around inside the store like Delhi taxi
wallas.
In India, this behavior by children would have been tolerated, even encouraged, by the shopkeepers. But here, in Germany, they were scolded and we slunk out of the store. In France, things were no different. The children were yelled at while running around on park lawns in Paris. The well manicured lawns were apparently for decoration only. It soon became clear to them that they were entering a different world, filled with new expectations. It was a world where everyone seemed slightly sedated, and drained of the energy and excitement of River Town.

We finally arrived in New York, where we had made arrangements to spend a few days with friends in an apartment that overlooked Central Park. We were bedraggled from all the traveling. When we approached the doorman to the apartment, still carrying our belongings in a tattered Indian suitcase and a couple of wicker baskets secured with heavy brass locks, he glared at us suspiciously before calling up to our friends apartment and allowing us entry. We stayed in the city for a few days and then traveled to Ithaca, New York, where I had been hired as an Instructor in the Anthropology Department at Cornell University. In Ithaca, the children found new friends. For the first few days, Brian insisted on speaking Hindi, which to him seemed natural enough when speaking with children his own age. With puzzled looks on their faces, they turned to Tim, who served as his interpreter. It wasn't long before Brian abandoned Hindi entirely and began to speak only in English.

Pat took Lori to school, hoping to enroll her in First Grade. The Principal wanted to have her tested before she enrolled in class. As part of the test, she was asked to draw a picture of a typical family and their house. The results alarmed the school psychologist, who reported that all of her drawings of family settings involved “stick figures living in mud huts.” The psychologist concluded that Lori was “culturally deprived.” When Pat tried to explain that we had been living in River Town and that Lori was simply depicting what she had experienced there, the Principal wouldn't listen and sent Lori back to kindergarten to start life over again. It seemed a perfect example of the cultural prejudice and narrow mindedness that infects our educational system, and indeed our whole way of life, where wider cultural experiences are penalized instead of celebrated.

I continued to teach in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell, and was awarded tenure in the Department. But I never really adapted to life there, resigned my position after seven years and moved to rural Vermont, where we lived for thirty years in an old farm house on the side of a mountain. There, we raised a garden, chickens, a couple of horses, cows, and a pig we named “bacon.” The children continued school in Vermont and participated throughout their high school years in the highly competitive junior alpine ski racing program in Vermont. They eventually went on to college and to lead their separate lives. Tim started a small electronics company, eventually sold the company, and now works for a larger firm, traveling to all parts of the word in connection with his business. Brian received his PhD in Anthropology and Cognitive Science and works as a researcher in the field of medical informatics. Lori (the “culturally deprived” one) received her PhD in Cell Biology, and is a cancer researcher at a major cancer research center in the U.S. I went on to start a small cottage industry and to teach Anthropology from time to time at a local college. Pat became the Library Director in a small town in northeastern Vermont. After thirty years of harsh Vermont winters, Pat and I finally called it quits and moved to the Pacific Northwest.

Looking back some forty five years later, I realize now that we took our chances and could have drowned as a result of our experiences in River Town. But in reality, there is nothing unique about these experiences for the people who live there. That we were able to share life with them is something that has shaped my understanding of culture in ways that could never have been anticipated. The current that pulled us helplessly, but willingly, out to sea eventually loosened its grip on us, and allowed us to be washed back on shore with a much richer understanding of ourselves and others.

M
UCH HAS CHANGED
since I first lived in River Town nearly forty-five years ago. These chronicles are actually a piece of history now. I imagine River Town is much more modern these days, enjoying the advances in technology and economic development that much of India has experienced since my stay there. I suppose satellite dishes, air conditioning, computers, kitchen appliances, and automobiles are common in River Town, though I'm certain many of the lanes in River Town are still too narrow to accommodate an automobile. But I don't know the significance of all these changes. I suspect that the fundamental social practices that made River Town what it was also continue today. Just because River Town becomes part of a larger world economy does not mean that it loses what defines it, anymore than importing Japanese cars and Chinese toys have made Americans “more Japanese” or “more Chinese.” The residents of River Town will still celebrate arranged marriages, speak their local dialects, marry their daughters into their husband's household, maintain their particular food preferences and restrictions and worship their own gods and goddesses.

Much has also changed in the field of Anthropology. When I was a graduate student at Berkeley in the early 1960s, my mentors had done their field work in small, homogeneous societies in villages in Africa, the Amazon, or New Guinea. I read the classics by Malinowski, Levi-Strauss, and Radcliffe-Brown, among others. The emphasis was on the analysis of closed systems, isolated from the outside world. I found that the theories derived from these analyses didn't really apply to a complex society like that of River Town.

The generation of Anthropologists who came after me turned away from the study of culture altogether, dismissing the concept of culture as a misguided focus on “the other.” Instead, their interest turned to activist concerns about human rights, equality and political and social transformations that would signal the coming of a new world order. I think that we now know that while these concerns were well intentioned, they didn't really add to our understanding of the deeper nature of other cultures.