Don't get sick, or someone might try to help you!

My prolonged absence from this blog, dear readers, has not been due to a prolonged illness, as you might suspect from the title of this post. I was sick--the shits, vomiting, the usual--but, mercifully, it passed within 24 hours, and now I'm back on track.

But I have been away from a computer. This last week, I went with Vikramshila to Mashirabad, a province of West Bengal about 4 hours north of Kolkata. Mashirabad, it turns out, was the capital of India under the Moghuls, and so the area is littered with impressive mosques and palaces and tales of political intrigue. One day, I rode around in a car drive by a local guy who was very excited to tell us about the area's history. Lots of the stories involved clever deception on the part of the British, who played upon the fraying allegiances of the empire to gain control in India. Others detailed the opulence of the nobility. One powerful queen contracted TB, and heard that by eating the livers of men she could regain her health. So she had a different lover every night, and in the morning had him killed to eat his liver. Who cares if it's true? When you're wandering between mango orchards and silkworm farms, and standing on the banks of a 400 year old lake dug as protection for an 400 year old palace, you do understand why India has a reputation as a mythical place.

The occasion for the trip was a 5-day literacy summer camp headed by Vikramshila and UNICEF. Mashirabad is an extremely poor province. It also borders Bangladesh, which is even poorer; thus, via Mashirabad, India is constantly infused with immigrants looking for work. The border security here is even more laughable than in the US. Furthermore, many of the kids do various kinds of piece-work--a delicate kind of sewing called jute and rolling cheap cigarettes called biris are the most common types.

The idea of the camp was to introduce some new teaching techniques and give the kids some unusual attention. India's education system is extremely top down, on all levels; in the classroom, there is a real "back to basics" emphasis, which keeps any kind of creative, participatory activitiy out in favor of "discipline." In addition, community participation in the schools is basically limited to meetings where the headmaster or district secretary tells mothers, condescendingly, to send their children to school. Vikramhsila and UNICEF were encouraging teaching reading and write by emphasizing that they are, at the root, communicative and expressive processes. So the kids did things like make colorful mind maps with Bengali letters on them, and read stories out loud to one another and then talked about them, and sat in circles with the teacher and the other students. Who knows how much can be done in five days--but it was clear that the children were engaged in learning, and that the teachers had gained some confidence in these wacky new teaching techniques.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned in Mashirabad, however, was a lesson in Bengali etiquette, and, in the process, about how I interact with people. Take this interaction for example; this is the second day after I fell sick. The first day all I ate was a bowl of corn flakes. Today, I'm eating some dal (a kind of lentil stew) and rice and a little vegetable curry.

Shubhra, the Vikramshila director and kind of the mom of the operation: Sam, have some more dal with your rice, you're having it so dry.
Sam (chipperly, but feeling like he doesn't really want any more food): No thank you.
Shubhra: But you're having it so dry!
Sam (half-lying here, in part simply trying to get out of taking more food): Actually, I'm still trying to take it a little easy on my stomach, so this is perfect.
Shubhra: You're right. It would have been better to have yoghut and rice [Note: this is Indian comfort food]. You will not eat any more of that. (She beckons over to the waiter. Sam laughs out loud and holds onto his plate and waves the waiters away. Shubhra finally leaves him alone.)

So people can be a little pushy with regard to food. This is particularly obstrusive when I'm ill, and I just want to be comfortable. But, in addition, there is a real miscommunication going on in that last interaction about how Shubhra could best helpe me.

As a secondary note, I should mention that I've developed a reputation as being too polite.

To explain these phenomena there are, I think, two distinct elements of interest:

1. The Bengali "No."

The Bengali "No" does not mean "No." If someone asks you to take food, "No" means, "I'd rather not say I want to take more, but I want to take more." It also means this sometimes in other facets of life. This custom is accompanied by a high amount of pushiness, which is needed to figure out when a "No" is really a no.

This one has been pretty easy for me to figure out. If I say "No" enough times, in the right tone, with the right amount of casual, sincere dismissal, I can usually deny things I don't want. Usually. The rest of the time, I'm stuck.

The other element has to do with something I realize I do, which confuses Indians beyond belief, and that is:

2. My response to the question, "How do you like it?"

A couple of interactions have indicated to me how mysterious my valuations of food items are to Indians. In Shubhra's hotel room, the staff brought tea for everyone else and coffee for me. I was asked how it was, and I answered "It's not great, but I'll put some milk and sugar in it, and it'll be fine." In fact, after I had make these measures, it was still bad, so I had about half the cup. Shubhra then accused me of lying about how the coffee was. I responded that I had not lied--I had said it was fine, but had not wanted to drink it.

Later that day, at dinner, Shubhra ordered a soup, and it sounded like a good idea to me, so I did the same. She got her's first, tasted it, and said it was terrible. When I took a spoonful, I thought it was perfectly palatable, and said as much, but spent most of the meal on the sandwich I had ordered. Again, I was accused of lying. I said that I hadn't lied, which induced Shubhra to exclaim, jovially, "That's it! I give up! I am done trying to figure out what you like!" Actually, I was happy that she had decided to give up--to me, her constant inquiries into how I liked things seemed like intrusions.

But then I had a realization: when I hear the question, "How do you like the soup?", I interpret it to mean, "With regard to the soup, would you like that any action be taken on your behalf?" Taken this way, my responses can be similarly interpreted to mean, "Though I find the soup to be of low culinary quality, I would not want to induce inconvenience on the part of any present member"; or, alternatively, "Though this soup is mediocre, it is fulfilling my current need for simple nourishment, and therefore acceptable." But Shubhra was actually asking for my opinion of the soup! Fancy that! And, when I told this to her, she responded that it would never occur to her to take any response to imply such obligation.

If I have been more polite around here, it's because I've wanted to avoid the tussles that come as a result of the Bengali "No," by heading them off at the root.
What magnified these tussles in my mind this week, and thus lead to my realization of these obstacles to Bengali-American communication, was my illness. When I'm sick, I often just want to be left alone, and not asked to justify what I want to eat or do. In West Bengal, I think, a higher level of intervention in another's personal habits is tolerated than in the US.

All of this leads me to remember a famous saying about honesty: "Let your yeas be yea and your nays be nay."

Sure. Whatever that means.