A Turn to the Tummy: Part I

Before I begin, let me preface this post by acknowledging that I had originally planned to write about/ post pictures of the incredible experience that was the last day of the Ganapati festival (preview: the nickname "Eric the Red Beard" became quite popular) but without access to an internet connection that allows me to upload more than one picture an hour I figured I'd save that post for another day. In its place will be a post consisting entirely of matters pertaining to the real benefactor of any vacation, international or otherwise, the tummy (known among the more academic circles as the stomach).

Although we here at the Alliance carry the tremendous burden of having to get our own lunch during the school week, the pain is eased somewhat by having the ability to try a different restaurant each and every day. Thanks to the abundance of restaurants on the two main roads closest to our home campus of Fergusson College, we could very well go a month or more without eating at the same place twice. To add to the excitement of variety, almost none of us have yet deciphered the many Indian dishes yet, meaning that even with an English menu in hand we oftentimes have little to no idea what might come out once we place our order. In my case, this meal-time roulette has been largely positive, which probably has more to do with the high quality of Indian food than the luck bestowed upon me by my Irish heritage, but its still nice to think that my ancestors have got my back. Thanks to my host family's helpful hints and some tasty trial and error, I've been able to familiarize myself with a handful of dishes and as well as decode some of the still mysterious dishes. But before I get into the specifics of my culinary conquests, I feel I must lay down some background information on the Indian dining experience.

For one, as you might expect from a predominantly Hindu land, vegetables are a staple of many an Indian recipe. That's not to say that meat is absent from the restaurant scene by any means (though you'll be hard pressed to find a good burger or steak around these parts), only that vegetables form the substance of many an Indian menu and diet. In fact, restaurants typically broadcast whether they are pure-veg (no meat products at all in the kitchen, though eggs are allowed), standard veg (meat isn't served but the kitchen isn't necessarily meat-free) or non-veg (for the meat lovers of course!) Even at the pure-veg restaurants there's never a shortage of worthy dishes, though to be fair many restaurants list slight variations in dishes as separate orders (like with or without butter, or with or without cheese) that would typically be presented in a more compact manner in the states. Despite this, there are still an astounding array of vegetable dishes, ranging from the humble aloo bhaji (a simple potato dish) to the fan favorite palek paneer (spinach, varying in consistency from soup-like to solid depending on where you go, and what's often described as Indian "cottage cheese" though in my opinion it bears more resemblance to a cross between mozzarella and feta). In between there are many dishes that combine vegetables and cheese with some form of bread, as in the pancake-like uttapa or any of the numerous meals served with chippati/roti (a round bread sort of like a pita only flatter and less doughy). Americans could learn a lot from the vegetable-dominated diet of many an Indian, but that's not to say that they don't have some unhealthy eating habits here.

Enter ghee. Ghee is described here in India as "purified butter" which essentially means removing all the water from butter so that what you have left behind is little more than refined fat. There doesn't seem to be many things that ghee wouldn't be appropriate to put on from the Indian perspective, though putting it on breads and in thick, chili-like dishes is particularly popular. At home, we always have some ghee on the table, though neither myself nor my roommates typically indulge in the rich, golden liquid, much to the dismay of our host-dad's elderly mother, Ai (aa-yee).

Salt is another Indian favorite. As my mom knows all too well, I try to limit my salt intake as much as possible. Sadly, even though Indian cuisine has access to many a spice, which are still used in abundance, generous helpings of salt are still omnipresent. Just this evening my host mother noted that she had failed to put as much salt in our eggplant bhaji as she normally would, but she didn't think to fix it because no one had complained about the lack of flavor! (See, it still tasted wonderful Gouri!)

Though slightly healthier than the abundant use of ghee and salt, Indians' affinity for tea probably wouldn't win the doctor's stamp of approval either. But unlike America's coffee addiction, the problem isn't too much caffeine, but rather a love of super sweet tea. During our orientation, we had frequent tea breaks (partly out of Indian custom but mostly to stave off unconsciousness thanks to the brutal jet lag) and I think just about everyone agreed that what we were drinking could just as easily have been liquid sugar disguised as chai tea. Since arriving at my home stay, the tea hasn't been quite as sweet, but Gouri tells us that her father used to have at least three teaspoons (!) of sugar for every cup of tea.

Looking at the length of what I've already written I can only hope that a few survivors have made it through the sea of words above. For the sake of those champions and all those lost along the way, it seems only fair to reserve further tummy for another post on another day. Expect lots of gushing about the food at my host family's house, a few highlights of Pune's finest eating establishments, and an assortment of photos of all the American chains that have somehow managed to shoehorn their way into Indian culture (McDonald's with no Big Mac?!?) Thanks again for reading, and I promise more visual aids in the future!

Indiana Jonesing

While I previously admitted to having very few expectations prior to arriving in India, one I definitely did not expect was how overwhelmingly beautiful the landscape of this country can be when not touched by its rapid urbanization. I got my first hint at such a phenomenon when we left Mumbai for Durshett (sp?) where our orientation would take place. By the time we were an hour outside the city, the half-finished towers and crowed slums had given way to large stretches of rolling green hills. By the time we were just outside Durshett, the terrain had become so dominated by vegetation that it almost seemed like we had been transported a completely different country. Unfortunately, during our first couple days in Durshett we weren't really given the opportunity to explore our verdant surroundings, instead having to focus on the obviously unimportant task of how to live and adapt to our new life in a foreign country.

On our last full day in Durshett we were finally given a reprieve from such trivialities as safe travel tips and cultural standards when we went on an early morning hike to a tribal village located on a nearby hill. While the rain of the Indian monsoon season continued to mount its case against the Pacific Northwest for most consistently depressing weather, we Alliance students were undeterred. Fortunately the rain rarely strengthened beyond a moderate drizzle, and as you'll see in the pictures (!) below, the scenery, both natural and man-made, proved more than sufficient in taking our minds off the weather.

(Sorry, slight delay in these pictures, but they'll be here soon!)

Only a few days later, after arriving in Pune and meeting up with my wonderful host family (Hi Gouri and Neelesh!), my roommates and I were taken on an another hike, this one much more rigorous than the first however. After driving about an hour or so outside the city (and into the wonderful realm of smog-free air), we arrived at the foot of a mountain who's Marathi name escapes me at the moment, but who's English translation literally means "Weird Mountain." And while I couldn't find any features of the mountain that were out of the ordinary, the hike itself was certainly unlike anything this desert-dweller had ever encountered before. For one thing, we had barely made it a quarter way up the mountain when the rain started hitting our face at what felt like 90° angles and the wind gusts ramped up to at least 40mph, completely negating any minute feelings of regret at having missed out on all the excitement of Hurricane Irene back in the states. To compound the unfortunate weather, the clouds descended such that we couldn't even get a sense of when we'd reach the top, since we could never really see more than 30ft above us, as seen in the pictures below. I have to be honest here and say that I did harbor some doubt as to whether or not we should continue, particularly when it felt like the wind didn't need to get much stronger to blow me off the side of the mountain all on its own. But the six of us marched onwards and upwards, taking in the radically changing landscape as it went from rocky and grass covered to lush and tropical in the matter of a few dozen meters or so. Not long after we observed this change in the environs, we ascended a particularly steep, stair-like part of the trail only to emerge in front of a large stone door that had seemingly grown right out of the face of the mountain. Behind the doorway stood a stone staircase that I momentarily thought might take me all the way up to heaven to meet God and Led Zeppelin. Needless to say, the payoff couldn't have been any greater and at this point I'll stop talking (typing?) and simply let the pictures speak for themselves! (Well after the meticulously crafted captions of course.)

The beginning. Note the already very low clouds...

If you squint you can see the waterfalls!

Visibility was at a premium on Weird Mountain

Pretty spectacular view but imagine how great it would be with added sunshine!

Almost at the top...luckily there were kindly informative arrows lying around just in case.

Living out a real life version of Indiana Jones/ Lord of the Rings? Check.

Quite possibly what you might see before entering heaven

The clouds graciously got out of the way a bit on the way back down!

Namaskar! (That sort of means hello in Marathi!)

Hi! And welcome to the inaugural posting of The Chutney Chapters! If you're one of the ten people who will read this, let me first thank you because I can barely motivate myself to read professional blogs let alone by amateurs like yours truly. Hopefully these posts will be insightful, humorous, and thought-provoking but in reality most of you will probably just be looking for cool picture which is also totally fine. Sadly, no such pictures will be forthcoming in the near future due to lack of internet on my own computer so you'll just have to console yourselves with the lyrical prose contained in these first few posts.

First a brief background on the name of my blog. I don't know about my fellow Alliance students, but before going to this great nation I knew next to nothing about India aside from what I had learned from the movies Gandhi and Slumdog Millionaire, which my host family have since informed me are about the two worst representations of India they've ever seen. So I guess that leaves me with zero prior knowledge. And while I had also not had the pleasure of sampling much Indian cuisine before I came, I did know one dish that was definitely Indian: chutney. Now I confess to not having had the faintest idea of what chutney might actually be before I came (my knowledge basically stopped at dip-type dish) but I was struggling for a creative title and it seemed as Indian a word as any. And as my former AP Lit teacher Fritz Mast knows all too well, I'm a sucker for alliteration, and thus The Chutney Chapters.

I can't possibly hit all the highlights of my first week in India in this first post, but I'll try and comment on my most poignant impressions so far. Having first arrived in Mumbai, not Pune which I now reside and will continue to be for the next three and a half months, my impressions start there. For all of you that have ever felt endangered driving down a busy road, or frustrated by the slow molasses of the afternoon commute, let me assure you that you are living in automobile heaven when compared to India, at least in the streets of Mumbai. "Driving lanes," if there are any to begin with, are little more than the faintest of suggestions. Moving down just about any major street in India can best be compared with a Nascar race on steroids: everyone jockying to be the first one to an unspecified finish line, with the smaller cars and motorbikes being particularly agile. Somehow I've yet to see even a minor collision but you'd never believe how close people get to one another. As such, honking is less an expression of agitation here and more of a survival tactic, with everyone letting each other know that "Hey! I'm coming up behind you and I have no intentions on slowing down, so kindly move to the side!" As you can no doubt imagine, this makes crossing the street feel like a real life game of Frogger but I'm already getting accustomed to the Indian practice of simply banishing all fears for your life every time you step out into the road.

Another substantial revelation I've come across here is that Indians have a very notable distaste for utensils. All meals are eaten with the hands, and more specifically the right hand, since the left hand is considered unclean (and rightly so based on the customary toilet habits here, but I digress). Basically every Indian meal is a five-year old's dream, as almost all dishes are meant to be eaten by scooping them into the hand. Fortunately almost all meals are also served with some sort of bread which can used in a utensil-like fashion, saving one's hands from being a complete mess.

While staying at our Orientation location I also got my first exposure to traditional Indian "games." I say "games" because none of them were actually competitive but none could be described as lacking in entertainment value. The first one was a jacks type game played with five pebbles, one of which you throw up in the air while grabbing the other ones scattered on the floor below. To the best of my knowledge it seemed completely up to your discretion as to how many you picked up at a time, but the kind Indian woman teaching me the game seemed more impressed when I picked up more than one at a time. The second game was an exercise in nausea control, as it consisted of anywhere from two to four people linking arms and trying to spin in a circle as fast as humanly possible. Unsurprisingly it was a ton of fun, and even had the thrill of danger thanks to the very real possibility of someone letting go while spinning. The third game was of a more discriminatory nature, since it required one to have exceedingly long hair. To demonstrate the game to us, the Indian women teaching us undid their braids or buns and began to spin their hair in big circles, not unlike you might see at your favorite Poison concert. Unfortunately my locks were not of a sufficient length to participate in this activity, but I could always forgo a haircut for the next several months...

As I'm prone to do in verbal communications, I've already begun to ramble. Hopefully this first post has given the dozen or so of you a vague idea of everyday Indian life, but if not I encourage you to return for the subsequent posts, if for nothing else than for the pretty pictures!