Taste-Test Survey

On Wednesday, I finally held the vegetable soybean taste-test survey! This was sort of the project that my internship has been leading up towards, and it was over in a matter of hours, which felt a little strange. We set up a little before noon at the Indian canteen on campus, and were there until about 2:00. There was a wonderful turn-out; people were enthusiastic and receptive to it. And towards the end, a class of school-girls on a field trip came in, and tried participated as well.

I had hoped to get 50 participants; we got about 80, of which 66 were usable. Since my focus is “Prospects for vegetable soybean in India and its market acceptance” I’m going to emphasize the data from the 60 Indian participants (the other 6 came from France, Vietnam, the U.S., Switzerland, Bangladesh and Japan). I worked on the analyses today and the early results seem to show what we expected; the basmati varieties did well in the taste ratings. I’m still working on seeing if there are any influences on preference based on age or gender.

I guess she didn't like it...

Update

The past few days have been quiet. The office has been pretty empty, and I have been sick. I’m getting better, though, and hopefully will be back to normal in the next few days. I had a relaxing weekend, with some yoga (I bought a mat at the supermarket last week and Helene and I have been using a yoga program she downloaded), lots of reading (just finished Zorro and Green Hills of Africa, and am moving on to Sinning with Annie, the Illustrated Man, Tess of the D’urbervilles, and Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen), and movies – Helene and I transitioned from Harry Potter to Miyazaki films.

On Saturday I thought I was up to going out, and so went with Helene, Sahima and Shraddha to a big mall in Banjara Hills (the ritzy part of Hyderabad). I took a few pictures of the food court, where I was able to get a Subway sandwich and fruit salad (with apples!!). Unfortunately, these might’ve made me sick later, but they tasted so good it was almost worth it. Before we left I was able to visit the bookstore to restock on new books, as well as a Harry Potter with a different cover.

Since I don’t have much else exciting to report, I thought I would share a few little things that I haven’t really mentioned before about India and the campus…

• The head shake: The motion to indicate “yes” isn’t up and down like in the U.S.; it’s more of a bobble side to side. This can still be confusing.
• Light switches: On/off are the opposite directions than I am used to. Helene tells me it is also like this in Europe.
• Driving/walking: You drive, and tend to walk, on the left side of a road. Usually. Sometimes you drive into oncoming traffic to make a U-Turn, or if you happen to be a carrier truck in a race.
• Skin Tone: I’ve heard a couple of Indian women fret about getting darker while working in the sun. I usually tell them that a lot of Americans try to get darker in the sun by tanning.
• Canteen music: In the canteen, they usually have music playing from famous Bollywood movies. But every now and then, you hear things like Barbie Girl, the Macarena, Spice Girls, or a remix of My Heart Will Go On.
• Punctuality: Timeliness seems to be pretty flexible here. For example, while I understand the work day to start at 8:00, people arrive in the mornings between then and 8:30. This probably isn’t good for me.
• Bandhs: Since I’ve been here, there have been a couple of bandhs, or strikes. These vary in severity from the closing of some schools or bus-lines to city-wide closures. Lately they have been increasing in frequency as supporters of Telangana (the desired separate state from Andrha Pradesh) grow more fervent. From what I understand, there was a small bandh on Friday because a Telangana supporter tried (or succeeded, I’m not sure) to kill himself in Delhi.

And some impressions of India… I know I only get a very limited view of one city in India. The ICRISAT campus is very much a bubble – there is open, green space, breathable air, enforced traffic laws, and so on. As such, it’s still pretty jolting for me each time I go outside. I can’t say I particularly love it, either. Aside from it being so physically taxing, it’s hard to face the reality of the subcontinent. There is something like four times as many people in India, but in a country a third of the size. By my American standards, everything seems filthy. The sky is gray and hazy, vehicles emit visible fumes, dirt cakes the roads, buildings, stalls, and cars. Garbage is heaped on the sidewalks, in the gutters, in water bodies, in fields. Men candidly relieve themselves on the sides of the road. Driving with the windows down invites constant, putrid smells – decomposition, stagnant water, defecation. There hardly any trashcans, let alone recycling bins.

And the poverty is everywhere. Slums are commonplace; drive a few minutes, and you are bound to pass a collective of ramshackle tents made of blue tarps or pieces of corrugated metal. I’ve encountered a fair number of beggars, and rather than getting used to it, I feel more and more inclined to give each time it happens. I hate ignoring them. When we were in an auto-rickshaw coming home from the Charminar, while stalled in traffic, a stooped old man thrust his arm – only a swollen stump cut off at the elbow – into the taxi. Helene reminded me that we couldn’t do anything; he must’ve been mutilated as a child to become a more pitiable beggar, and wouldn’t benefit from a donation anyway, as it would just go back to the boss. Another time, while waiting at a bus station, a woman spent long minutes alternately tapping each of us on the arm, showing us her hand upturned, and pointing at her big, watery-eyed baby’s mouth. I felt particularly monstrous in this case, as we were on our way to go shopping.

Part of my feeling of detachment comes from the knowledge that soon, I will be leaving. And I am relieved by this, but ashamed of this relief. I’m not sure how much responsibility I will feel the need to bring back with me. At the least, I can say I am motivated in terms of not only fighting hunger, as is the point of these internships, but also for women’s rights and environmentalism.

It's hard to capture in pictures, as I feel pretty uncomfortable snapping shots of people directly...

Hard Rock, Henna, and Village

On Saturday, Helene and I went on a long walk around the fields in the afternoon to look for birds. Dr. Ram lent me his copy of the ICRISAT Bio-Diversity guidebook, so now I can do my own wildlife/bird identification. We found quite a few: cattle egrets, purple swamphens, parakeets, kingfishers, red-wattled lapwings, crows, and a peacock with its feathers flared!

Peacock from the back...if you can tell...
Purple swamphens
Cattle
Egret? Heron?

That night, in honor of Mari’s last weekend, we hired a taxi driver to take us to a big mall about an hour away for a farewell dinner at a Hard Rock Café! It happened to be James Bond Night, so there were half-hearted light-show performances every half hour or so. It was the most western place I’ve been in a while – there were even two waitresses wearing dresses above their knees. We stuffed ourselves with nachos, [veggie] burgers and ice cream while we could.

On the way out, Mari and I saw on the mall directory that there was a Cuban lounge on the top floor. We ran up to check it out. There was a private party going on, but the bouncer let us in anyway – maybe just because we were foreign, maybe because Mari explained that she is Puerto Rican. It was funny – all the décor was of Che Guervara.

On Sunday, Helene, Sahima, Mari, Shraddha and I went outside for a few errands. Sahima has been feeling unwell, so stopped into the hospital for a consultation. Here are a couple of signs from the hospital that I found noteworthy:

Beneath "5:00 PM TO 7:00 PM ONLY" reads "COCONUTS ARE NOT ALLOWED"

Then we went to a parlor, because Sahima wanted to get her eyebrows threaded. This is like getting the eyebrows plucked, but with two pieces of string twisted together that are slid along the hair until they catch and pull it out. I thought I might as well give it a try, too, because it’s such a distinctly Indian practice. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was impressive to watch.

On Monday, I went to the IACD again to work with the Spoken English class. I’m getting a little more comfortable there; I’m still uncertain about what exactly would be most helpful for them to work on, but at least everyone seems more relaxed, as we laugh more and I’ve gotten confident enough to correct them more insistently (like when they pronounce “bear” as “beer”). It’s tricky, though, as Indian English definitely has some fundamental structural differences from American English. Questions might be formed like “What it is?” for example.

Huyen and I also got a tour of the ICRISAT genomics facilities that day. A lot of it was under renovation, but we got to see most of the machines. Neither of us have much background in the area, though, so I think a lot may have gone over our heads.

On Tuesday, we did a third big harvest of the vegetable soybeans and spent the morning washing/boiling/blanching/drying/freezing them. I finally have samples from all five lines, though one of them (AGS 459) has such a small yield that it will probably have to be omitted from the taste-test.

The office has been pretty empty this week – Dr. Ram and Warwick are out of town at conferences, and Tomar and Rehana are on leave. So it’s been Usha, Neeraja and Huyen and I, but that’s been pretty fun. Huyen really wanted to get a henna tattoo, so on Tuesday Usha did it for her and me. It was big itchy while drying, but it looks fabulous now!

Henna color after it dries

Today, Wednesday, I went with Helene to the village she is working with for her own research. She is with a department working with the management of dry-land systems, so she is investigating pest management and resistance in a certain village. We went to try to collect samples of a certain caterpillar from a tomato field. She expected to get about 100 samples; we found 4 after searching for a couple hours. It turns out the larvae don’t emerge until early September, which is when Helene leaves. She was a bit frustrated, as collecting the samples now had been part of her approved project schedule.

Tilling a rice paddy field

Cattle without a cart or driver...

Setting up a trap for moths

Looking for Helicoverpa caterpillars

One of the four we collected...

These guys seemed to be in an awkward teenage chicken stage

I was still glad to go, though – the village was really cool. I feel pretty removed from “India” on the ICRISAT campus, as it is very much a bubble. This was refreshing, to actually see the small farms in action. Everyone was really friendly – like one woman that offered to “adopt” Helene and me and tried to pull me from the truck so she could give us lunch (we were already late to get back to the office, though).

The drives to and from the village were some of the most terrifying I’ve yet experienced. It was about an hour, mostly through two-lane country roads. This, of course, means that there are sometimes 3 or 4 vehicles passing each other. Trucks race each other and seem to sort of play chicken, and more than once the driver of our pick-up went completely off-road to get around a slower car. It’s sort of perplexing to me why the traffic is so frantic and impatient, as the Indian work culture seems pretty laid-back and unhurried.

A typical view from the street

Harvest and Harry Potter

My mentor Dr. Ram was back at work on Monday, coinciding with the timing of the first harvest of the vegetable soybeans that have been growing for my taste survey, so fortunately there has been more hands-on work to do at work this week.

On Monday, we had the first harvest of three of the five lines of vegetable soybean. Usha and Huyen taught me how to recognize which pods are ready for harvest; when they are bright green, the seeds fill 80-90% of the pod and are visibly defined, and are hard when squeezed.

As the taste-test survey will not be for about two weeks, we then boiled, blanched and froze the pods. All the pods will be given the same treatment so preparation isn’t a factor in the taste.

On Tuesday, we dissected some flower buds under the microscope. I was able to see the things Dr. Ram gave me some talks about during my first week here concerning plant biology. For example, the standard, wing, and keel petals, the anthers, stamen, and pollen, and so on.

On Wednesday, we visited two vegetable markets. One was a weekly city market, where farmers could sell directly. The second was a daily village market located on the street, where sellers deal with the farmers through a middleman. I was able to see some new vegetables, and get a better sense of the marketing problems that might be faced by farmers.

The weekly market. There is something pleasing about seeing all the veggies in bulk...

Onions

Snake gourds

The best mangoes I have ever tasted

Tomatoes

Carrots and root vegetables

The daily village market

On Thursday, Dr. Ram arranged for us to have a tour of the ICRISAT gene bank. In large freezers, they have short- and long-term storage for the genetic material for thousands of varieties of their mandate crops: sorghum, millet, chickpea, pigeonpea, and ground nut. I also learned there is a backup gene bank in Svalbard (I immediately thought of the Golden Compass) in case of a global catastrophe.

The drying room

On Friday we had a second harvesting of vegetable soybeans, this time getting a big yield from a fourth line. The fifth hasn’t had such a good yield, and might need to be omitted from the survey. And – there’s a mite infestation on the AGS 406 line…

But the pods still look good.

Boiling/blanching again

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I also went to the IACD from 11-12 to teach the Spoken English classes. On Tuesday I brought in my laptop to show a slideshow of pictures from the U.S. I put together, featuring pictures of all my family, Buddy, Kobe, friends, classes, different vacations in the states, and Molly and Jose’s wedding. On Wednesday and Thursday it rained all day, which affected attendance – only a few people were in the classes, but they actually felt more productive. I still feel like I am floundering as an English teacher, but I figure as long as I have them talking in English in some way it will be at least a little helpful. They also taught me a few Telegu words and phrases – but I am hopeless at the pronunciation.

I ran into these three on the way to the IACD one day.

This week was also Harry Potter week. Helene and I, sometimes joined by others, watched each of the Harry Potter movies, one per night, in preparation for Deathly Hallows Part 2. On Friday after work, we headed to the theater! (Helene had to go a few hours earlier to buy tickets; due to some issue between companies Indian theaters weren’t selling tickets in advance.) After a dinner of naan and dal in a restaurant next door, we got to the theater…

The last supper.

The Indian theater was an interesting experience. Unfortunately, no one was dressed up – I was probably the most spirited in my Hogwarts t-shirt. Despite the PG-13 rating and some gory scenes, people had babies with them (we could tell because, understandably, they were crying). There was an intermission, and I suppose wolf-whistling is the way to cheer/clap for movies. However, the movie was amazing, and it was an emotionally trying evening! I can’t wait to see it again in the states. J

Luckily Helene was there to capture the emotional moment...