Carrot Cake, Tombs, Palace, Mosque, Charminar, Bazaar

On Thursday after work, Helene, Daniel (a new intern from Switzerland), Shraddha and I travelled to High Tech City to go to the mall where there is a big grocery store. I wanted to get some ingredients that are sort of hard to come by so I could bake Huyen a cake for her last day of work on Friday. We ate at Chili’s again (it was delicious) and then got our groceries. I also stocked up on Kinder Joys and Toblerones.

Really good cheese-spinach-onion quesadillas

Kinder Joy!

On Friday, everyone at the AVRDC office had lunch together at the canteen to honor Huyen. Before lunch, I prepared a cake batter – carrot cake, because it is a vegetable center, after all. After lunch, I baked it in the microwave and attempted to make cream cheese frosting. Unfortunately the “cheesy spread” I had hoped would be cream cheese wasn’t actually, but it still turned out pretty well! The texture of the cake was a bit off, but I was still really pleased with the result. I think everyone at the office liked it too!

I entered all the raw data from my vegetable taste-test survey into Excel and passed that file along to Dr. Ram, who sent it off to an AVRDC analyst. I’ll get those results back by Wednesday. In the meantime, I have done some rudimentary analysis myself. It turns out there were actually 4 basmati lines, and they performed the best as far as taste, while the one non-basmati line did well in rating of appearance.

It was a really great weekend. On Saturday, we hired a taxi to be our driver for the day and went to the city for some sight-seeing. First, we visited the Paigah Tombs. They were constructed in the late 1700s by Nawab Taig Jung Bahadur and later by his son Amir e Kabir I. They have really amazing and apparently unique architecture, with detailed screens and stucco work. It isn’t a major tourist spot, and was quite secluded and serene. One of the little boys residing there was very friendly and took me around, even though we couldn’t speak each other’s language.

Here's out taxi...

And at the tombs...

Daniel, me, Shraddha, Helene, Sahima

With our young tour guide

One of the intricately carved screens...

After a lunch of biryani, naan, and some delicious chai tea special to Hyderabad, we visited the Chowmahalla Palace. I really need to read up on Hyderabad’s history; it is supposed to be very romantic, as exemplified by the extravagant relics like the palace. The palace’s construction began in the late 1700s and was completed in the late 1800s by Moghul rulers. Presently it covers about 11 acres near the Charminar, and consists of four decadently furnished palaces and courtyards. I’ve read that in its days of glory, huge parties were hosted there comparable to the “Enchanted Gardens of the Arabian Nights.”

I love these flowers. They're everywhere on campus too.

It was such a beautiful day!

Nehru!

Next, since Daniel and Shraddha hadn’t been there yet, we visited the Charminar again. I really love the view from the top, though, so I didn’t mind at all. I’ve learned “Char” means four and “minar” refers to the towers or minarets. Daniel, Helene and I got the usual attention, but some people were a bit rude today – just walking up and shoving cameras or cell phones in our faces to snap a picture without asking or saying anything. One friendly man asked for an autograph.

Then we visited the Mecca Masjid Mosque, which is one of the biggest in India, and about 400 years old. Women had to cover their heads, so Helene, Shraddha, Sahima and I bought scarves before going in, where we removed our shoes (the ground was quite hot). We couldn’t enter the mosque proper, but it was still very cool. There are apparently chandeliers inside covered with real diamonds that are covered until Ramadan starts.

I met some boys who were very excited about a photograph. I've found that to be a good ice-breaker for most kids; pull out the camera and take their picture.

Finally, we took another stop in the Laad Bazaar where I bought some more bangles to bring home. :)

On Sunday, after a pleasant sleep-in, Helene and I prepared for a picnic. We made a rice salad with tomatoes, onions, olives and some of the vegetable soybean that had been left from my survey with olive oil and lemon juice, and brought along a loaf of banana bread and some bananas from the canteen. We took it outside to a grassy area near one of the campus lakes, and had a very pleasant lunch.

We've been practicing our jumping pictures...

Afterwards, since the weather was absolutely perfect – bright, sunny, warm, blue-skies, puffy clouds – Helen and I spent four hours at the pool, alternately swimming, reading, and basking, and later playing cards with Daniel. We rounded out the night by watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in honor of it being Harry Potter’s 31^st birthday!

The Perseid Meteor Shower is to start about now and last for the next couple of weeks, so I’m going to start watching the skies whenever there is a clear night!

And, suddenly, I will be home a week from writing this! I have mixed feelings - I miss everyone terribly, and can't wait to get back, but will also miss the friends I've made here!

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