INDIA

One friend said she was looking forward to hearing what I thought about India. I didn’t write too much about it last time, but I had to visit a second time in November, and I’m going a third time this weekend. I thought I would write just a bit more about what I have observed.

Culture – If you read the opening story you saw a small picture of the culture: one southern U.S. man using the addressing others with “sir” for an entirely different reason that a student addresses someone with “sir.” In India, a teacher is respected. Of course, a professor is respected more; education appears to be big business. Really big. With over a billion people, it’s highly competitive to get into the right schools. I read articles and saw news reports about the university/college entrance exams that students put their heart and soul into. The reason that education appears to be so big is that it is directly linked to job opportunities. Again, with such a large population (and not necessarily a large number of jobs) there is so much competition, not just at the educational level, but even at the professional level. Newspapers are filled with job “classified” sections. People often feel that how you fare or perform in secondary school and on the entrance exams can determine your life. Lately, though, there have been many for-profit universities and institutions springing up because of the demand for education. You can go to a 4-year university, a vocational school, a technical college, a training centre, etc. The list goes on. If I were prime minister, one of the biggest initiatives I would work on in order to alleviate poverty would be opening up educational access for all and job access for all.

One important job I’ve seen in India is that of a matchmaker. Just as in the paper there is the classified section advertising job opportunities, there is a separate section in the Indian newspapers for love matches. In the U.S. and on many matchmaking websites in the UK and North America, the person looking for a match, husband, or wife advertises himself or herself in the paper or online. In India, family members or a matchmaking agent usually represents young single people. In my family, we often joke about taking resumes of potential wives and conducting interviews or the difference between a potential wife on paper (her resume) and in person (same for men). Well, they still actually do it here in India. There are even matchmaking meetings, almost like speed dating but instead of the potential dates, it’s their agents. People come with photos and resumes and they get down to business. Big business. Finding a partner and wedding, in India, is like getting a job or getting a car. Again, it’s hard to paint India with one brush because there are definitely young people or celebrities in India who are pushing the envelope and widening the spectrum. But on the whole, marriage is just something you do, as it is in many countries. And finding the right partner can mean the difference between favour and acceptance of your families and good social status versus rejection by your family, family rifts, or even mediocre status. One of my good friends does not talk to her father much because she married the wrong caste. He tries, he really tries to talk to her, but it grieves him so much that he must apologise for not speaking to her. The problem with the huge drive towards weddings and marriages is the disparity between the male population and the female population.

The Underside – To explain the importance of the disparity of the male and female populations, remember that India is this dual-personality country in terms of “development.” It all depends on the context and perspective. For instance, in Africa, India is seen as another “developed” nation coming in to invest in Africa in order to reap a return; others have included the UK, the US, France, and now especially China. The G20 considers India to be at least emerging. To the Department for International Development (DfID) here, India has reached a point where the UK feels comfortable ending aid to India. This means there will no longer be any new grants to do development in India from DfID, and ongoing projects will end by 2015. But then if you look at the numbers or visit India, you’ll see that a majority of the world’s poor live in China and India. You’ll see that India has the largest class of poor people in the world. To Prime Minister Singh, his number objective is poverty alleviation; that’s a “developing” country prioritization. So it’s a mixed bag, and the society in India is highly diverse and stratified.

So when people talk about the emerging Indian giant, don’t be completely fooled. Remember that as India’s GDP grows, it does not mean inequality is decreasing. On the contrary, it is increasing. India is still a majority rural country with a roughly 60-55% rural population and a 40-45% urban population. If a majority of the “growth” isn’t happening in rural places, then there naturally is a disparity. Because of the inequality, it often reminds me of places like Brasil or South Africa who deal with relatively frequent crimes such as murders, rapes, car-jackings, muggings, etc. In India there is a sexual harassment, sexual molestation, and rape problem. Some people will disagree and say it’s concentrated in the north of India and not in the south. Some say it happens everywhere. I don’t have numbers on the relative frequency of different regions of India, but it definitely happens as the recent story of the gang-raped university student in Delhi shows us. The story is recent news, but the news is an old story in India.

One of the reasons blamed for this situation leads back to the differences in male and female population. There is a sex-selective abortion problem here, as in China. Due to the one-child rule to help curb population growth in China, not only are a group of words in the Chinese language slowly moving closer to being obsolete (uncle, aunt, brother, sister), but people will selectively abort female fetuses when they find out the gender of the child through tools like ultrasound (this also means the practice is concentrated towards populations that can afford it). The one-child rule did not create a gender preference for boys in China, but it has exacerbated that historical preference. The same is true in India, and studies have shown that the ratio of boys to girls is rising (you can think of this as gendercide). In some places like Punjab, I’ve seen it reported as high as 120-126 boys to every 100 girls.

Now the gender imbalance is not an excuse for sexual harassment. I’m just telling you some people use it as an excuse, as if the fact there aren’t enough women for every man to wive means that men can act out frustration by harassing women or raping women. Others blame clothing (which is ridiculous); some blame a woman’s lifestyles. The misogyny and specifically harassment, molestation, and rape of women in India are not specific to India. But the acceptance and apathy of the state and the shame forced on victims makes the problem very difficult in India. Of course the problem manifests on many levels of society. First, there is a type of misogyny present in society (we have it most societies); there are men that are not respecting women. Secondly, many girls and women don’t report rape because it means you have lost honour. Plus, even if you are raped you are “used,” in a sense, from the perspective of someone looking for a virgin to marry. Thirdly, many male policemen are rude, uncaring, and harassing. Some do not bother to file the report when a woman has the courage to report it. Even doctors can be unhelpful. Fourthly, even when a report is filed, it is often mishandled in court, the accused gets off, or it takes too long to even come before a judge (check out the 1972 Mathura case, the 1992 Bhanwari Devi case, the 1996 Suryanelli case, the 1991 Kunan Poshpora case, the mass rape of women from the 2002 Gujarat riots, etc.). Lastly, even if a woman has the courage to report it, a police officer sensitively and patiently investigates and files a report, and a court quickly takes the matter to trial convicting the perpetrator, the punishment is often too weak. Sexual harassment is not considered rape and so if a rapist is given a sexual harassment conviction or even if the perpetrator committed sexual harassment without raping the victim, the perpetrator’s sentence is low and will be out in a few months to torment the victim again, taking revenge. It would be really great if each of these problems could be addressed possibly through 1) better education of the value of women both in schools, at home, and in entertainment; 2) educating women about the importance of reporting rape in order to stop it and that it is not the end of your life, increasing post-rape support services (including marriage-finding support possibly); 3) including lady police officers in every location, letting women officers handle rape reports, training all officers on how to handle rape incidents and reports; 4) including women judges in city courts, and creating a separate fast track for rape, molestation, and harassment cases; 5) widening the definition of rape or increasing the punishment for molestation and harassment. I’ll be visiting India again so I’ll write more about it later. Though I focused on some of the work that has to be done, there are many things I love about the culture including Indian movies. J

ITALY – FOOD

The food here is an art form, I’m sure of it. I didn’t realise this but many people come here for culinary tourism like in the Eat, Pray, Love book. Some people come to just eat and eat and eat. Others come to learn how to cook. You can travel to Italy and take cooking classes learning a specific cuisine or style. And people make homemade pasta here like it’s nothing. I’ve never made pasta from scratch but it seems like it’s not an easy thing to do.

I spent some time in the province of Liguria in the Northwest coast of Italy. Liguria is known for being the birthplace of pesto. For that reason, the moment you arrive in Liguria the restaurants start serving pesto options like it is its own flavor. I am not used to that. I’m used to pizza with pesto, not pesto pizza. I’m used to a tomato based pasta with pesto not pesto pasta. But that is exactly what they had. You could have anything you want in a pesto flavour or sauce. It was very interesting.

I think what was most interesting about the food is that each city and town makes their food slightly differently. So I was on a mission to try pizza in each town we were in and compare it. It took me awhile but I finally became accustomed to the Italian-style pizza. I grew up liking pizza with more calories, the thicker American-style or even the thickest Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. So it took awhile to get used to it, but then it felt good. You would eat pizza and still feel hungry (is that good?) or light. But the main thing I saw everywhere was gelato.

Gelato seems like a national pastime in Italy. It’s what you do when there’s nothing to do, especially when it’s hot. And it is quite amazing. I’m not sure what it is exactly or how you make it, but it’s not like ice cream. I didn’t even have milk-based gelato, I only had sorbetto (or sorbet). Now, when you have sorbet outside of Italy, it takes like . . . like ice. In Italy, the sorbetto is like ice cream. I’m not sure how to describe, but I had to ask more than once “Are you sure there is no milk in this?” It was so creamy. I’ve never had creamy-tasting sorbet before but that’s how Italian sorbetto is. I loved it. Again, every town claims to have the best gelato. We found the best gelato in a small suburban shop in Rome.

So now, I understand why people actually go and study Italian cooking. I originally thought it was a bit narrow. How many ways can you cook or make pasta? But it’s quite rich and diverse and has the potential to be ridiculously tasty if done well. And, yes, we ate well.

FOOD

Food, food, food. Everywhere I turn there is a focus on food, with an emergence of so many food-related movements seeking to overturn the food industry both on the production and consumption side. When I was planning my 3rd wedding, I created a website for it and had to list different food types for all the special diets out there. Here are a few of the ones I remember having to list.

Carnivore – A person who eats meat (some people think of it as people who only or consciously eat meals with meats, hence the “need” or “impetus” for flexitarian)

Omnivore – A person who eats meat and non-meat foods

Vegetarian – Also known as a herbivore, a person who only eats plants, vegetables, and fruits. This person eats no meat. Some vegetarians do not eat eggs, some do. Some vegetarians will not eat from food cook in a pan or pot that was used to cook meat or from a plate that has meat on it or touched meat.

Flexitarian – A semi-vegetarian. This term has no one accepted definition. It’s a person who combines a vegetarian diet with occasional meat products. Some people say to me, “Is that what it is? Well, I do that naturally,” to which I say “I tend to think of it as a person who does this consciously. So because I consciously have days where I do not eat meat (vegetarian days) and days where I do, I would call myself flexitarian.”

Fruitarian – A person who diets on fruits, nuts, and seeds with no animal products, vegetables, and grains. Fruitarians are most known for being people who only eat fallen fruit. In other words, they do not want to do or eat anything that harms an animal or a plant, and picking fruit is considered harming the plant. Some think eating grans is unnatural. Some don’t eat seeds because it’s considered future fruit or plants. Some eat seeds after they have naturally fallen to the ground. It goes on and on. The first time I heard of the term was in the movie “Notting Hill.” Famous fruitarians include Gandhi and Idi Amin who both did it for a period in their life.

Pescetarian – A vegetarian who eats seafood, or a carnivore whose meat intake is only from seafood. Eggs are allowed in a pescetarian diet. The funniest thing about pescetarianism is listening to people pronounce the word.

Vegan – A person who eats no animals or products derived from animals. Technically speaking fish sauce, oyster sauce, animal milk, casein, lard, rennet, honey, and butter are not part of the vegan diet. Veganism is a larger category into which fruitarianism is a subset. One can be an ethical veganism which means you oppose the use of animal products for anything; this includes silk, fur, beeswax, etc. Or one can be a dietary vegan in which you oppose the use of animal products in one’s diet.


Freegan – This is my favorite. Ha ha! A person who eats anything free. Dumpster diving is a typical practice of freegans. Donald Miller lived a freegan lifestyle while working at a park for one summer, as noted in “Blue Like Jazz.”

Invasivore – A person who prefers to eat food from invasive plants and animals. This is a subset of the locavore movements since invasive species are local. Invasive species are species of plants or animals that are not native to a location, but have been introduced into a region and have a widespread, colonizing adverse effect on the habitat and life of other native species of plants or animals. They threaten biological diversity in the region they have been introduced. Good examples include some non-native harmful weeds, the yellow starthistle, and the kudzu vine.

Locavore – A person who prefers to eat locally grown and produced food. Hallmarks of this movement include the growing number of farmer’s markets in urban areas around Western Countries.
Slow Food Movement – the movement promoting good, clean, fair food through advocacy of traditional and regional cuisine local to each area. Such a movement would opposed the opening of a McDonald’s near the Spanish Steps in Rome, for instance.

The types continue with gluten-free, ovo-vegetarian, etc. There are even labels on the types of eggs you can buy.

EGGS
Free-range – label that is unregulated by any regulating industry for all foods except poultry. In the poultry industry in the U.S., it’s regulated by the USDA to mean that at least one period a day the door to the coop or pen is open for the birds to go out. However, if the birds don’t see it or don’t go out, the company still qualifies for the “free-range” label. So it can mean vastly different things from different companies. Moreover, nothing regulates when you start giving this access nor for the open door to allow more than one hen to exit at a time. In “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” the author describes visiting a free-range establishment in which hens were allowed to exit once a day starting at 5 weeks and they were killed at 7 weeks. He saw no hens exit during his visit to this particular farm.

Cage-free – the hens are not kept in cages. It means nothing beyond that. For instance cage-free hens are often kept indoors. Its’ true that cage-free hens may roam in an open area outside, but usually if you can you will take the best description that most promotes your product. So why not say you’re selling eggs from pasture hens or pasture-raised hens? The hens usually roam in a barn or poultry house on some floor operations. Cage-free says nothing about how the hens are treated.

Organic eggs – the hens have received no commercial fertilizers or pesticides, and the hens and eggs have received no hormones or antibiotics. But this says nothing with how the hens are kept.

Humanely-raised eggs – no regulated definition. One of the organizations that has risen to help create a definition, Human Farm Animal Care, requires the exclusion of cages, the inclusion of at least 1.5 sq ft per hen, and (for free-range hens) the inclusion of doors to the outside allowing more than one hen to exit at one time. Forced-moulting (when hens at the end of their egg-laying are denied food, water, and light to produce an extra session of egg-laying) is not allowed, though debeaking is.

Pasture or Pasture-raised eggs – The USDA describes it as "birds are raised outdoors using movable enclosures located on grass and fed an organic diet (without hormones or non-organic additives) and/or raised without antibiotics (drugs that are intended to prevent or treat animal illnesses)". But I am unsure whether this is regulated. I believe this is just a guiding description.

There are so many diet types, movements, and food diets that it can get confusing. I hope I gave you a few you may not have heard like invasivore which is relatively new. I decided recently that I need to educate myself about the food I prepare and eat. So I looked for books and documentaries dealing with food. Here are a few I found.


The Omnivore’s Dilemma –This is a well-researched book by author Michael Pollan who simply asks the question “What should we eat for dinner.” Pollan explores 4 different food paths/industries: industrial food (McDonald’s and similar companies), organic (eating a meal from Whole Foods), hunting/gathering food which shows Pollen gathering mushrooms and hunting actual pig for dinner. It’s really insightful (for instance showing the huge dependence of our food on corn), funny, extremely well written and researched, and it’s one you will enjoy.

Food Inc. – Directed by Robert Kenner, this film builds off of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “Super-size Me,” it is co-produced by Participant Media as it explores how the goal of larger and fast production of food has resulted in enormous profits by a few companies while the health of consumers, the safety and health of animals, and the safety of workers in the assembly line is often overlooked. This documentary scared me because it showed how they were able to minimize the time it takes to grow a chicken to a suitable age and size to be killed for food. It also showed how they’ve increased the size of the chicken breast over the years and the horrible conditions in which the chickens are kept before killing them. It was quite sad. I’m sure there is some effect on the food you eat if the chickens undergo such stress in life. The worst part was showing how Monsanto has created a monopoly on seed supply especially through manipulative legal suits and revolving door policies in government. They have sadly pursued predatory litigious practices against farmers who happened to get Monsanto genetically modified seed blown into their field. It’s quite ridiculous. The documentary also shows how healthy food is more expensive than less healthy food which creates a dilemma for the poor. What freaked me out the most was showing how Monsanto uses viruses and bacteria to insert herbicide-resistant genes into our food.


Forks Over Knives – Written and directed by Lee Fulkerson, this documentary was the first time I understood of food as medicine. It attempts to show how many of the diseases (like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer) we face are due to animal-based and processed-food-based diets. The scientists in this film have done studies that point to the conclusion that such diseases are almost always prevented, and in many cases reversed, by a plant-based, whole-foods diet.

Food Matters – Directed by James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch, this documentary talks about the foods we eat, the importance of whole foods and organic foods. One topic I heard of was how cooked food causes some internal rejection due to the cooking process, and the body must overcome this. I had never heard this. According to the movie, in order to avoid the rejection effect within the body a person must eat a diet with at least 51% of uncooked food. Some cultures do this naturally like Thai cultures, for instance. I suppose this thinking has spawned the food movement that dehydrates food as an alternative to cooking. One of the biggest points of the film is the use of food as therapy—nutritional therapy. In the US, it is illegal to open a business advertising nutritional therapy as cancer treatment. So many people go to other countries to seek alternative nutritional therapy as a cancer treatment. What was new to me (but made sense when I thought about it) is that poisonous treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy really seem to treat symptoms of cancer and not the root since a majority of people who see no trace of cancer after such treatments get the cancer again in the future. I don’t know the percentage of times nutritional therapy works, and it doesn’t work in every case (according to my friend) but the results were dramatic. I would like to see a scientific study (similar to that done in Forks over Knives) to see of the effectiveness of such a treatment.

Food Beware: The Organic French Revolution – This was my favorite of the movies/books because it showed a mayor taking action in his city. In this small French town, it was decided that the school canteen (cafeteria) would use all organic food production. It was interesting to see the movement and awareness grow in the town, the meetings between the school leader and the parents to acquire support. It was even very interesting to see organic farmers sit down with farmers that were non-organic. One falsehood expressed in that meeting is that it’s impossible to feed the world’s population with organic food. I believe this is false. I think it’s been shown that you can feed the current world’s population with sustainable organic practices. In any case, it’s never been tried. What was super scary was seeing the health problems that have arisen from the use of pesticides and herbicides. I’d never seen a farmer spraying it on his crops. The one they showed looked like an astronaut. He had to protect himself from the material he was spraying on the food! He actually said he would not eat the food he was growing and family members had experienced health problems which he attributes to the herbicides and pesticides. Other families had similar health problems. It’s a nice film that weighs in on nutrition, sustainability, and what can possibly be done in one town.