Chai Tea

Blog Post 13

3/17/2023

27O9’31” N 78O3’14” E

Chai tea is to Indians what Starbucks is to Americans. It is the preferred beverage of all. The first thing that you are offered when you enter someone’s home is a chai tea. And in the beginning, I would never accept, not wanting to intrude, but as I saw more, I realized it brought people joy to give their guests hospitality, and so I started accepting. I never expected how much chai could tell me about the world.

Four chais specifically come to mind with their accompanying people. The first chai was made by a fascinating man with a vivacious personality. He was extremely passionate and full of reactions and excitement to the world around him. His chai was similarly abundant, filled with wild spices and tastes. His wife on the other hand was more reserved at first glance, but upon spending more time with her you could see a twinkle in her eye and the kindness and excitement that matched her husband’s. Her chai was a classic, delicious chai at first but hid more intriguing flavors under the surface. When we visited the Langa musicians, their chai was sweet with delicious with teas and flowing flavors underneath. My favorite chai, however, was from a small village in the middle of the Thar desert. We arrived on camelback, and our guide took us to his home in the center of the village. He lived in a complex with multiple small houses with thatched roofs. Then a lady with long white hair and a beautiful old sari stepped out and brought us two chais in old white cups. I will admit that with the first sip, I felt trepidation, but as I tasted it I realized that it was the most familiar, comforting, and delicious thing I had to this point. It was rich and creamy, warm and sweet, and somehow all too familiar. Like hot cocoa in the winter or my grandpa's delicious cappuccinos.

It is astounding how chai is so different but so central, no matter where you go. This simple theme of drinking chai clues into something much deeper. It starts to reveal the central themes and differences of humanity. We as human beings are ever-shifting, malleable creatures. When we are born, we have our bodies, and maybe some base psyche, but that’s it. Culture shapes everything else. Growing up in one culture for the beginning of my life made it difficult to see that, but as I travel the world, I realize more and more how humans can be so different based on their cultural foundation.

(Before I go any further, I’d like to clarify something: these differences cannot and should not be used to divide people. Because cultural differences are so general between different groups, and individual differences can be so great, if you pull two Americans off the street you will find more differences between those two specific people than you will between two separate cultures. That’s the nature of humanity. Still, these cultural differences are profound and give fascinating insights.)

Chai tea is a small and simple example of these differences, but there’s another, one that is so foundational to all humans, that it's easy to overlook. That is the communication of body language. When you grow up, you don’t learn one language, but two: spoken, and gestured.

Gestured language is learned through copying each other. A baby observes for years and slowly mimics the tiny cues that make up every interaction we have. And while there are general universal gestures that all understand, there are also profound and nuanced differences from culture to culture.

Take, for example, the movement of the head. In America, we generally have two motions: the up-and-down (yes) and the side-to-side (no). But in India, I’m constantly baffled by the whole range and nuance of the motions that take place. Some main ones I have noticed are the tilt of the head to either side, and a general shake in both directions that forms an infinity sign with the nose. On many occasions, our guide for the first two weeks, Ashok, would have to make some interaction like buying a parking spot or tickets, but rather than have a long conversation, he would exchange maybe one or two words, and then ten seconds of sometimes rapid, sometimes tentative head movements would occur, after which money would be wordlessly exchanged, and then we would leave. I am still baffled as to what they mean and I understand I can only truly know their meanings by spending years here watching and absorbing as humans always do.

It’s a fascinating experience to step out of your culture and see these incredible and subtle differences, one I wish all could have the chance to live. One might think that focusing on our differences might undermine the unity of the human race, but astoundingly it does not. These differences may highlight the diaspora of humanity, but it somehow also gives an inexplicable feeling of unity. The notion that, though we are all separated and different we are just trying to live as best we can and communicate beautifully with each other.

Jaisalmer Musicians

Blog Post 12

3/15/2023

27O9’31” N 78O3’14” E

The musicians of Jaisalmer:

Forward note: I’m trying a new blog format where rather than some up the place I relate a specific experience. Tell me what you think.

Today I went to visit Langa musicians, which live in Rajasthan by jodhpur, India. I’ve had many adventures here so far but now I will tell you about the Langa musicians in Barnawa Jageer

We spent two hours in the morning, driving across bumpy roads, pitted with potholes to arrive in an arid desert with a small village of 250 houses at its center. This specific village was a community of gypsy musicians who had stopped being nomadic recently (I know the term Gypsy is considered politically incorrect, but they referred to themselves with the term so I will do the same). It’s extremely interesting, being a foreigner in India, because you’re treated with extreme deference and curiosity. There’s also a custom in India to treat guests as gods so when the two effects are compounded, it makes for a surreal experience. I say this because it was extremely enhanced when we visited the musicians. When we arrived, there were chairs set out for us, and a whole host of musicians waiting to play, but we were the only spectators, myself, my father, and our friend's family. At least 50 villagers came running to crowd around us, staring at us, and taking videos of us, while the musicians prepared to give us a private concert.

The music that they then played was so incredible that I will not even attempt to describe it but instead upload videos and recordings, to the website. You will not truly understand the beauty of the music unless you visit them in person, but hopefully, my recordings can give you some hint of its incredible style. We were ushered from family to family to hear their songs as every house in the town had at least one musician. And they used a host of instruments that would be unrecognizable by anybody in America. One called the sarangi which looked like a violin but with 10 times the strings hundreds of knobs to tune them, and was played like a cello. We asked how old one of the specific sarangi was and they said it was 500 years old and imported from Pakistan.

This experience was so deeply soul shocking through its shire differences and richness of culture that it is almost impossible to place it within my worldview. But that is the goal of my travels: to absorb as much of the world as I can and let it shape my philosophy and understanding. Here the blog is my savior, I will use it to frame my experiences and ideas and match them to the questions and revelations I am having. Today I have no way to place my experiences at the Barnawa Jageer village. Maybe I will have insights tomorrow, or maybe I will have them next year, but I know today that I am forever changed. Hopefully, these blog posts can impart some of that understanding to you.

Winter Count

Blog Post 11

3/7/2023

27O9’31” N 78O3’14” E

Three weeks ago, I camped out in the arid Sonoran Desert in Tucson, Arizona at a yearly event called Winter Count, which consisted of around 50 teachers holding a class for 500 students about primitive skills. The basic classes were making cordage from dogbane fibers, flint-knapping arrowheads and stone tools from chert and flint, and making fire using the hand-drill and bow-drill methods. If you wanted to go deeper, some of the more advanced classes include brain tanning a deer skin, which would take all week, or nixtamalization of corn, which also took all week because first you had to weave a willow basket to then nixtamalize the corn in. I would love to go into the details of all of these incredible processes, but then you would be reading a book, so for the time being, I recommend you research these crafts yourself or simply go to a gathering.

This oddly specific type of survivalism gathers quite the interesting mix of people. There are mostly hippies ranging from sixties-era love-bus-dwellers to the pseudo-hippies clad in equal parts tie-dye and Patagonia. But, as with all things in life, the hippies are balanced out with conservatives ranging from reasonably redneck and curious all the way to those who wear “Thin Blue Line” and “Don’t Tread on Me” shirts, with a large dollop of Mormons besides.

Now, you would think this would create division. But a surprising and beautiful unity is formed where everybody simply acknowledges that everybody else is there to build a community and have fun for a week in the desert. I saw conservative Christians listen respectfully while the hippies ceremoniously lit a fire or held a final circle about love and connection. I heard about how the conservative owner of the land was so moved by our respect for nature that he no longer allowed his friends on the land to shoot and litter. Throughout the week, I saw people from both sides of the aisle coming together at a place above politics, religion, or creed.

If you’d asked me a couple of years prior what was the most important takeaway from Winter Count, I would have told you without hesitation: the skills. But now I know it is more than that. People gather together to learn, and without knowing, the true intention is to build a community and bridge all divides. They come for the skills and leave with a family.

I have always had a love for people’s stories, and at Winter Count, my thirst is sated. I sit around the flint-knap pit, slowly hitting piece after piece off the blank, trying and failing to make an arrowhead while the old masters exchange stories of exploits from better times. And the most sacred and coveted spaces at the core of Winter Count are always places of sharing. Everybody feels, whether consciously or not, that the most valuable thing is sharing in each other’s stories. This unjudged sharing and listening is the best way for people to forget any biases they have and simply look at each other as human beings.

P.S. There are many India blog posts soon to come!