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
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