Some Favourite Quotes from the Subcontinent

These things we cannot change. We can only observe.
(Principal Dhatt of Landour Language School, regarding the oppressive place of women in Indian society.)

Some of my best friends are Muslims.
(Dr. in Dharamsala.)

That is a tall man, a very very tall man. Very tall, very blond.
(Stranger walking behind Nathan and I at the India International Trade Fair in Delhi, November 17, 2007.)

Is Canada a democracy?
(Rickshaw driver in Delhi)

Canada. Oh, Canada, Australia, right? Oh, I don’t know much about geography.
(Nurse at Max Specialty Hospital, November 22, 2007, just after she inserted an IV needle into my arm.)

John! John! Stop hitting him while the foreigners are here! Wait until they’re gone!
(Liquor store employee in Kahn Market, Delhi, about a man who had been caught stealing a bottle of whisky.)

Oh look. Foreigners just walked in here.
(Man at table in Britannia Restaurant in Mumbai.)

No honey. You’re not foreign. They are.
(Woman in Mumbai restaurant, pointing to the whitey couple at the next table.)

Where are you from? Oh, America and Canada. Good countries. I’m glad you’re not from Israel. Very bad country.
(Taxi driver in Mumbai.)

Favourite Signs, etc.

Please allow us to frisk you for your safety.
(On the screen at the PVT Saket movie theatre in Delhi during the previews of Leonardo di Caprio’s film The Eleventh Hour.)

Not suitable for children.
(On the label of a sugar free ice cream.)

Gluttony Restaurant
(The Library Mall, Mussoorie)







My husband forgot to use his contraceptive last night. What should I do?
(I-pill advertisement on Mumbai commuter train - I added the bold, but not the italics)

A huge billboard advertising cardamom (all over Kerala).

Poster inside auto-rickshaw in Trivandrum: Two toddlers, one boy and one girl, each wearing jeans and a baseball hat. Both are topless, and they are kissing, under the words “True Love is True Hearts.”

Badonis Shop – We Know What You Need Best
(Landour, Mussoorie)

Best Things Seen on Modes of Transport

Two men and a goat on a motorcycle (outside Udaipur, Rajasthan).

Two men and a bicycle on a bicycle (on highway in Punjab).

Four goats in a basket on the back of a scooter (Trivandrum).

Nine mattresses on top of an auto-rickshaw, which was filled with pillows (Trivandrum).

About 25 flats of eggs and a man on a scooter (Trivandrum).

A real good rub-down

I finally made it to Kerala, and more importantly, I'm finally on vacation. I arrived here with my nasty chest cold still hanging on, so I figured I should take advantage of being in the birthplace of ayurveda and get some treatment. I went to see the doctor at Ayush Bhavan Ayurvedic Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram who gave me a mysterious collection of black tablets (which had to be CHEWED!) and brown liquids. Tasted horrific, but after 3 days of it I felt much much better. The more pleasant part of the treatment was a series of ayurvedic massages with specially prepared oils. These were unlike anything I have previously experienced. I went into the room with Aysha, the masseuse, and was told to strip naked. She then dressed me in what I can only describe as a loin cloth - a string around my waist with a strip of muslin hanging in the front, which Aysha pulled through my legs and tucked into the back of the string.* I sat down on a stool while she took some heated oil in her palms, seemed to pray over it, and then rubbed it into my scalp. Once the head massage was complete, I climbed onto a high, elaborately carved, wooden table. What felt like litres of warm, scented oils were poured onto me and rubbed over every part of my body (and do mean every part) in an intricate pattern. When I was finished, I had to be helped off the table because I was so slippery with oil.

What came next was perhaps the most memorable part. Aysha took me into the adjoining bathroom so I could wash off. This seemed reasonable; otherwise I probably would have broken bones just trying to get up the stairs, let alone home, because I was so slippery. What I hadn't realized, however, was that Aysha was going to bathe me. She dumped warm water over me, lathered up my hair, and soaped my whole body with her hands. She rinsed me well with buckets of warm water. It was a little awkward at first, but actually kind of nice. I guess this is part of the whole package. I couldn't relish it as much as I could have because I was trying so hard not to let any water get in my mouth and trying to keep the oil from running into my eyes. On top of that, all I could think about was the memory of walking through the Latin Quarter in New Orleans a few years ago and stumbling upon a "wash-your-own-girl" bar. I didn't go in to check that one out, but the idea kept coming back to me at the Ayur hospital. Somehow, though, I think I had the better experience of the two.

*On the second day, no loin cloth was offered. When I asked if she was going to put one on me, she flicked her hand and said "No" as if this was the most ridiculous thing I could have suggested.

Parsi Pulav

Mumbai is famous for its food, and although I was still sick and having trouble breathing, I wanted to get out and experience some of the local eats. So last Saturday, I dragged myself away from the comfort of the air conditioned hotel room and wandered the back streets well off the tourist track to find the Britannia Restaurant. I found this place thanks to my handy Rough Guide, which sometimes includes little gems not in the Lonely Planet (meaning they are not on the main backpacker trail). We were just about to give up when we saw this grubby sign with the painted letters nearly worn off. It looked more like a garage than a restaurant; the whole front was open, there was not much resembling décor, and it didn’t look like it had seen a paint brush since it opened in 1923. We were really hungry, and there wasn’t much sign of other options in the area, so we took our chances and went in.

The first sign we were in a good place was a voice from the table near the entrance saying “Hey look. Foreigners just walked in here!” Apparently this was a place known mainly to the locals. We sat down and an old Parsi man came to greet us. (Parsis are Zoroastrians who fled to India from Iran.) He had impeccable British English, and looked old enough to have been around during British rule. Nathan ordered something called a Chicken Sali, a chicken stew with crispy potato sticks, and I got the berry pulav – one of the dishes Britannia is famous for. It arrived and was FABULOUS. A mound of roasted vegetables buried in huge plate of perfectly cooked and sautéed rice was topped with crisp caramelized onions, cashews, and dried zereshk berries that are still directly imported from Iran. We were starving and in need of some really good soul food, and the Britannia didn’t disappoint.

The ambiance of the place was just as satisfying as the food. It was clearly a place that was all about the food and not at all about glitz or pretension. A bit dowdy, but clean. The napkins were printed with the outline of a chicken and the words “There is no greater love than the love of eating.” These were obviously my kind of people. The old man, who turned out (not surprisingly) to be the owner, kept coming by to make sure the food was ok. I was looking for something in my notebook when my food arrived, so I didn’t dive in right away. The old man, Mr. Kohinoor, promptly stopped me and told me to eat first and read later. His reputation was on the line if the food got cold and I didn’t like it! I thought I’d best listen to him, and he can rest assured that his reputation remains intact.

Dessert was in order, so Nathan got the caramel custard, another tasty Britannia specialty. I couldn’t resist the mishti dohi (literally: smoked curd), a Bengali delicacy that tastes a hell of a lot better than it sounds. It’s sweetened curd (yoghurt) made in a small earthen pot and smoked. You have to taste it to believe it. It’s hard to find outside of Bengal, but a friend in Delhi introduced me to it and thankfully showed me the best place in Delhi to get it. I now order it whenever I see it on the menu, which isn’t often enough. Anyway, Mr. Kohinoor seemed impressed that I knew what it was, and his mishti dohi was the best I’ve had.

Mr. Kohinoor kept stopping by for little chats, and often I was reading something when he did. Finally he came by the table, sat down, and said “You must be doing a PhD.” Just like that. To which I had to reply “Actually, yes I am.” He wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing in India, who we were. He told us the entire history of the restaurant, which was opened by his father who took out a 99-year lease on the place in 1923. He also answered my burning curiosity about Bombay Duck. I knew it wasn’t duck, but could never remember what exactly it was. They had it on the menu, so I asked. It’s a dish made of salted dried lizardfish that’s landed on the Bombay docks. He also told me – chuckling - about the American tourists who sometimes come, order Bombay duck, and then complain about the absence of duck on their plates. There was some discussion of the mysterious origins of why the fish is called duck, and a little more about politics and how he’d like to see some other leaders try to run a huge, relatively new country like India. In the end, he concluded that the world will be a whole lot better place when it’s run by women like me. I’m not so sure I’m the one to do it, but I think he might be on to something there.

Little Boxes of Love

I went to Mumbai in mid December partly to visit the Navdanya outlet there and partly to learn more about the Dabbawallas. The Dabbawallas are a caste of people from a village near Pune, a city not far from Mumbai. They have the formidable task of delivering home cooked lunches to office workers all over Mumbai. (The word Dabbawalla actually means “one who carries a box’”.) Thanks to these guys, most people in Mumbai don’t have to carry their lunch on the overcrowded commuter trains and don’t have to rely on expensive lunches or fast food. Commuters usually leave their homes at about 7am to get to work. At around 9am, the Dabbawalla will arrive at their house to pick up a tiffin (metal lunch box) packed with their lunch, usually cooked at home by the wife. Through a complicated relay involving at least 4 different people for each lunch, several bicycles, trains, and a lot of balancing on the head, this lunch gets to the office of its rightful owner at about noon, just in time for lunch. After lunch, the process goes in reverse as the tiffins are picked up from the offices and returned home before worker gets there. A lot of the time they are carried on huge trays balanced on the head of the Dabbawalla, who somehow fits himself into the local trains. Most of the Dabbawallas are illiterate, so they use a system of coloured symbols to identify where each tiffin should go. The most amazing thing is that every lunch gets to the right place every day. The Dabbawallas deliver about 200,000 tiffins throughout Mumbai every day, with almost no errors. They are so accurate that they have become an international phenomenon in the management world, and have been studied by everyone from Stanford Business School to The Economist.

The Dabbawallas have grown into a huge operation of 5000 people, all from the same poor caste and mostly from the same village. They have organized into Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust, which functions as an insurance policy for the men and their families. They are able to get low interest loans to keep them from being indebted to the local moneylenders and assistance with health care. The Dabbawallas have changed with the times as well. Traditionally, the meals were cooked by the housewife and delivered to her husband. Now, with changing families and workforce, about a quarter of the tiffins are delivered to women. With no wife at home to cook, many meals are prepared by mothers or grandmothers, even if they live in a different house. Bachelors and other people without a cook at home can even arrange a tiffin service; their tiffin is filled by another family. They can find someone from their own region of India who cooks the kind of food they like, and pay them to cook a lunch for them every day, which is delivered by the Dabbawallas. They even deliver home cooked meals from mom to a lot of schoolchildren.

After spending so much time in Delhi where fast food and instant meals seem to have infiltrated the local food culture so strongly, I was amazing to see this system still so prevalent in the huge modern city of Mumbai. Why were people still wanting home cooked meals in a country where packaged food and take-out has become a major status symbol? Why Mumbai and nowhere else? To answer my questions, I went straight to the source, Raghunath Medge, president of the Dabbawalla Trust. Mr. Medge, who has become somewhat of an international phenomena, spoke to me with the help of a translator. He promptly handed me a business card and a copy of a thick report on their operations. He’s used to this sort of thing by now – his group has been studied, he’s been to Prince Charles’ wedding, and he’s been to Torino, Italy for Terra Madre (the biannual gathering of the Slow Food Movement that I hope to attend this year). Turns out not only are people sticking with the system, their business is actually increasing.

Part of the success of the Dabbawallas is location, location, location. The extensive local train system in Mumbai is what allows them to function. Tiffins are picked in the neighbourhoods up by a man on a bicycle, who brings them to a central location for sorting, and they are divided among other Dabbawallas who take them downtown by train. No other city in India has sufficiently reliable transport system to allow such a process to work.

But, there has to be more than that. People obviously want home cooked meals. Mr. Medge told me that people just like the regularity of the system. They know their lunch will come every day. They know who has made it and what goes into it – the kind of oil used, the cooking methods, whether it’s veg, pure veg, or non-veg. Whoever is cooking it knows preferences, food habits, dietary restrictions for health concerns. Plus, people know this food is healthier than what they can get in a fast food place or on the street, and they can get variety. Even in offices with canteens, people still use tiffins because they don’t want to eat the same food every day. What was really interesting – and something that is so striking against North American thought – is that people like to get their tiffins because they know the food inside was made with care by someone they know, usually a family member. The Sweater Man from the Delhi-Mumbai train, after overhearing our conversation about Dabbawallas, started talking about his own use of the tiffin service. He liked that it kept him connected to his wife. She knows exactly what he likes and doesn’t like. She makes healthier food than he can get outside. And she cooks with love. Love. Can you imagine your average business man on the morning subway talking openly about the love his wife puts into making his lunch? He talked about the strong connection that is kept through the food. He finds the food tastes better if it’s made by someone he cares about, especially for him. He likes to know where his food has come from, what’s been done to it, and how it’s been prepared. If he is not feeling well and doesn’t eat all his food, his wife will know because the tiffin will arrive back home with leftovers.

For all the things I’ve seen that are indicate India is going the way of the fast food culture, I find things like this that remind me India is different. Food is important to people here in a way that just doesn’t happen in North America. People really care about it, and they care about what they eat. Partly I think it might be the strong family ties that still prevail in society, but there is something beyond that. Food is a big deal in Indian culture, and it’s hard to imagine that connection to food that I worry about so much completely disappearing here.

Trains, Planes and Phlegm

After much anticipation, I am back to the virtual world. I’ve spent much of the last few weeks being a combination of frantically busy and horribly sick. The Delhi air - cold, foggy, and really really dirty - finally got to me. My lungs remembered they were asthmatic and started to revolt. It all started after I started to get a burning feeling whenever breathing in, and then it just gradually increased until I became a huge walking ball of snot and phlegm. Just before leaving Delhi, I started ejecting some black goo from my lungs, which was a little disconcerting. By the time I got on the night train to Mumbai (Bombay) a few days later my lungs had produced more green stuff than I thought could possibly fit in there. I spent a long night on the train at the grubby sink in between the cars gasping for breath and vomiting gobs of green from my lungs. (This situation was not made any more pleasant by the two railway men a few feet away who were creepily and unabashedly staring at me while stroking each other’s thighs and leaning in to either whisper in one another’s ear or kiss each other softly. I thought at one point they were going to fornicate right there in front of me.) It was like I had to physically expel all the air I had breathed in while in Delhi as I left the city. This continued through a few days in Mumbai and the flight south to Kerala. Now, thanks to a little bit of rest and some entirely unappealing ayurvedic medicine, I am breathing a little better.

On the train, we sat across from a middle aged business man on the night train from Delhi to Mumbai and chatted in between fits of coughing and lung-puking. Let’s call him “Sweater Man” because he was wearing one of those slightly gaudy patterned acrylic sweaters popular with Indian men of a certain age. Sweater Man was basically a nice guy, but also very nosey and slightly irritating in a well-intentioned manner. As are most people who chat up the “foreigners” here, he was quite interested in knowing where we were from, why we were here, and what we thought about his country and particularly its food. He also had an opinion about what we should be doing and where we should go. When I told him I was doing agriculture research, he insisted that I need not got to Kerala, but instead should see Maharashtra (home to Mumbai and Sweater Man). All the places I had been so far were the wrong places if I really wanted to understand agriculture in India. Never mind that he didn’t actually know the focus of my research.

On the topic of food, Sweater Man seemed surprised and a little offended when I didn’t eat the railway meal brought to us – a white (and I do mean white) bread and mayonnaise sandwich and a stale samosa. “Don’t you like Indian food?” he asked incredulously. I said of course I did, but wasn’t so fond of this food that wasn’t fresh, and anyway, the sandwich was very much NOT Indian. A little later they brought out the “tea kit,” a thermos of hot water, a Taj Mahal tea bag (owned by Unliver), some refined white sugar, and non-dairy creamer powder. I used the hot water to make my own tea: organic green tulsi (holy basil) tea made by Organic India. “Did you bring all your food from Canada?” asked Sweater Man. I just kept my mouth shut and started to cough to avoid having to get into it. There is a strange and disturbing trend toward more processed, more western foods that is becoming accepted as “Indian” here. There are deep fried paneer (cheese) sandwiches on the airiest white bread you’ve ever seen, and more packaged sweet biscuits in the shops than you’d find on the shelves of a WalMart in middle America. The saving grace is that these things are so far still made with real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. It’s similar to what I noticed in South East Asia 5 years back – the worst aspects of western diets are what get picked up first.

I think Sweater Man’s comments were a cultural thing. People here just share their opinions, which are stated as facts, and don’t question whether you want to hear it or not. They just tell you exactly what they think. If you look like crap one day, they will tell you. If they really like you, they’ll tell you that too. It may be alarming at times, but at least you know where you stand. Studying the language back in October helped a lot of these things make more sense. I used to think people were just being bossy because they seemed to be always telling me what to do. “Sit here.” “Come.” “Eat.” Whatever. Turns out that in Hindi, the word please is considered to be part of the verb, so you just speak in the imperative. When you translate this, it sounds rude to us, but if you say please and thank you all the time to a Hindi speaker, they think you are being precious and making a big deal out of nothing. The principal of the Hindi school told us that when his Australian wife used to ask him to please make her a cup of tea, he would refuse because it sounded like she was asking such a huge favour. If she simply says, “Bring me some tea,” he doesn’t hesitate at all to do such a small thing for her. He has picked up some of her habit of saying please and thank you all the time, and now their friends make fun and call him Mr. Please-and-Thank-You.

Thankful for Medical Tourism

Yesterday was American Thanksgiving, and I was thankful for my ability to buy a better health care system. I was up bright and early at 5am to take the morning train to Dehradun to interview some farmers near there. Just before rushing out the door I ate some new bread I had bought at a bakery the day before. Just as I was about to stuff that second slice into my mouth, I noticed a disturbingly familiar itching on the roof of my mouth. Brighter lights and closer look illuminated the tiny bits of walnut they snuck into the wheat germ bread. Ack!! What to do? Fortunately, there was a taxi waiting outside to take me to the train, so I woke up a friend to ask where the best hospital was and redirected my confused taxi driver to a posh private hospital in south Delhi.

After an hour's drive that felt like days, I arrived at the emergency of Max Super Specialty Hospital. (They are part of the morally questionable medical tourism industry here. They'll even pick you up at the airport). It was the most empty emerg I have ever seen. I was greeted by a doctor who asked what happened, and then laid out on a stretcher while someone, who may have been a trained professional of some kind, took an exceedingly long time to get an IV needle into my right hand (remember, the left is for pooping only). He kept looking at me nervously every time he poked and prodded, trying to get the damn thing into my tiny vein. It was more than a little nauseating. Anyway, I made it clear to the doctor that I wasn't going to just calmly lay there and accept whatever they chose to inject into my veins, even in my shaky condition. So after some discussion, they pumped me full of the strongest anti-allergy medication ever. I broke out in a sweat and just about passed out. Still, my throat wasn't feeling normal after some time, so we had more discussion about whether they should give me epinephrin or some steroid from the prednisone family (I think prednisone should only be used in a near-death situation, which I guess this was). Ultimately, they decided on the steroid. I passed out for a while, and got discharged after the nurse decided I was going to live. I was somewhat less than reassured when she asked me which country I was from, and then asked if Canada was part of Australia.

All in all, though, not a bad hospital experience, as they go, and surely much better than it could have been! They sent me home with a bill for Rs1900 (just under $50) and a prescription for more antihistamines and some H2 blockers. That's right, ulcer/reflux medication. Why? Because I was feeling nauseated from the walnuts when I arrived. I'd never actually swallowed a walnut before, so I think it's reasonable to feel a little nauseated. That, and I was operating on 3 hours sleep. They do love their drugs here, so I smiled to myself, took their prescription, and when on my way..... a little groggy but very thankful to be alive.

Work? Oh yes, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?

What with all the moving around and looking for a home, work got left behind last week. Now it’s back to the grind. I’ve found a translator/transcriber to help me with my interviews. Transcription of tape to text costs about half the Canadian price here, which is good considering all the hours of tape I have. I feel a little strange about outsourcing to India, but I guess since I’m living and working here right now, it’s not technically outsourcing. Anyway, it’s a slow process of setting up meetings and trying to make contact with people, but it’s coming along. I have to keep reminding myself of the Delhi Rule: Never, never try to do more than one thing in a single day. It doesn’t matter how small a task might seem to be, generally you can only expect to accomplish one per day. On the rare occasion you can do more than one thing, count it as a very special blessing.

In the meantime, I decided to check out the India International Trade Fair that’s on this week in Delhi. The theme this year is food processing, so I was naturally pretty excited about the whole thing. It’s a massive exhibition showing and selling everything from new machines for making extruded snack foods, to handloom weaving, makeup, tractors, and “as seen on TV” personal massagers, vegetable choppers, and exercise gadgets. And all of these things were mixed together in the exhibition halls with no apparent order to it all. Among the odd collection of things for sale were some fabulous textiles (I can never resist!), and a lot of information about the food processing industry. What was really fascinating to me was the sheer number of people. I know, I’ve spent enough time in India now that crowds, of all things, should never be a surprise to me. But, it’s a trade show, and it seems to be a major activity for the general public.

Homeless, but mobile, in Delhi....

My usual palatial home in Delhi, at my friend Lauren’s apartment, is full up with Lauren’s out of town friends this month, so I had to seek out other options. I arranged with a colleague from the Schumacher Centre for Development to stay at an apartment they keep for visitors, but discovered that the hot water geyser wasn’t hooked up (and you need hot water during Delhi winters), and it was a little dark and dingy. These things may have all been fixable, but the deal breaker was the strange man sleeping in the living room. He didn’t speak English, so I was a little confused, but it turns out he is the driver and sleeps there all the time. This was a little too much for me, so I decided to move on. I found a nice, clean, very cheap guest house in the Tibetan refugee colony of Majnu ka Tilla, north of the city centre. No kitchen, and it’s a bit far out, but there is a Metro station not too far away. It’s different out here, not like being in India in some ways. There’s a lot of poverty and not much good to eat, but thankfully less eve teasing (this is the new word I learned yesterday).

As for the Metro rides, they are amazing. It’s like nobody told India that the Metro is here. It’s like leaving Delhi and walking into a parallel universe. It’s clean, not crowded, safe, efficient, and fast. There are places fitting that description elsewhere, but they are in the world of the elite. The Metro is cheap – I pay Rs9 (less than 25 cents) to get halfway across town. Why isn’t everyone taking it? The only explanation I can think of it that the process of entering the shiny underground stations, using tokens or pass cards, and crossing the security barriers is foreign and intimidating for many people. It really is a different world than where the average person here lives. Maybe it will catch on with time, because it’s by far the best way to move around this city that I’ve seen.

Mcleod Ganj, His Holiness, and Diwali

Having bailed out from the slightly oppressive vibe on the farm, I moved to a hotel in the town of Mcleod Ganj, just north of Dharamsala. Mcleod is the town most people are referring to when they say Dharamsala. This is where the Dalai Lama’s temple and residence are. It’s a town full of Tibetan refugees, Indians who have lived here since before the influx from Tibet, and many many western tourists. The tourists apparently seem to fall into one of three categories: (1) backpackers, (2) Buddhists and folks concerned with the Tibetan cause, and (3) people who come here to visit and just never leave. It’s that kind of place. A little surreal, peaceful as northern India goes, incredibly beautiful, and somehow contagious. I can’t say I really like the town, in fact I’m looking forward to leaving, but I can see how someone could come here and just forget to go home. (In my case, it helps that this seems to be the best source of coffee I’ve found in India. You can actually get something resembling a proper espresso at random bohemian looking cafes around town. One of them even makes great cake and muffins. Other than that, though, it’s not the place for a foodie. It’s been nearly impossible to track down a decent meal. The food seems safe and clean enough, but completely devoid of flavour, variety, and texture.)

I stayed here a little longer than planned. It was meant to be a couple days of respite, but then I heard that the Dalai Lama was giving a teaching at the temple on November 9. It was a great experience to get to attend a teaching by His Holiness at the temple, but I have to admit I didn’t get the great spiritual experience from it that I might have hoped for. There were hoards of people, and you could hardly get a glimpse of him. (Although when I did, he was of course sporting that amazing jubilant smile he always has.) He speaks in Tibetan, and they have simultaneous translation over FM radio. The crappy radio I bought didn’t work, so I had to leave to buy a new radio, which sort of worked, but it was tough to follow the intense Buddhist philosophy with Tibetan going into one ear and a scratchy translated English voice in the other. Still, a pretty amazing thing to be there.

The Dalai Lama’s teaching coincided with Diwali, the Hindi festival of lights. It’s a crazy day of fireworks and firecrackers. I was just hoping not to get hit with random crackers being thrown into the streets. It sounded like bombs were going off all over town. I suspect there was some drinking going on as well, and thought better of taking the all night bus through the mountains that night, so the return to Delhi was put off for yet another day.

Unable to delay it off any longer, we jumped on the night bus for Delhi on November 10. Twelve hours downhill on twisty, dark, narrow roads with gorges far far below. Night might be more dangerous, but it sure it nice not to have to see all those potential horrific accidents waiting to happen!

The Organic Farm

From Amritsar, I came north to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh to visit my friend Ramesh on his farm outside of town. I also wanted to visit some folks I met at a local community health organization called Nishtha. Ramesh lives on a 14 acre organic farm that he started 3 years ago. He is experimenting with different crops and growing methods, and is trying to preserve some of the traditional local crops. He went up into the villages in the hills to find the old seeds, and is now growing the traditional black rice from this region. He’s also got five cows which he uses for milk, curd, and paneer. He’s hoping to set an example for the local people to show that they can earn a good living without pesticides, and wants to show the value of preserving traditional ways. The traditional culture here is quickly being lost as people start eating western foods, smoking western cigarettes instead of beedis, drinking soft drinks instead of jal jeera (a really cooling mixture of water and spices) or lassi (blended yoghurt drink), and buying packaged chips and cookies instead of snacking on the traditional chaat (fried salty snack foods usually bought from roadside dhabas, or food stalls). These habits are usually considered a sign of status, because they cost money, so people can show off by being seen consuming these western products. It’s not all status, though. There is definitely a convenience factor here, especially if you are not from a family wealthy enough to hire a full time cook.

It’s a remarkably peaceful place here. A beautiful farm settled in a valley next to a river, with the Dhauladar Mountains rising up to the west and mango and banana trees covering the hillsides. Neighbouring farms and villages have covered much of the hills with terraced plots of rice and wheat. Unfortunately, Ramesh has been caught in a drama with a local man trying to expropriate his land from him. Dealing with it has become his full time job, leaving him less time to focus on the farming and working out his ideas for helping the local people get involved in some small-scale value-added food processing ventures. Hopefully things will work out in Ramesh's favour soon so he can get back to focusing on the reasons he is there: the land and the local community.

A selection of the absurd occurrences in Punjab

When Nathan and I travelled to Chandigarh and Amritsar for a five days, odd things seemed to keep happening. Just when we thought things wouldn't get any stranger, well, you get the ideal....

28 October 2007: Chandigarh

1. The thali place, which serves only thali (no sharing), has no thali.
2. Went to the surreal Whole Foods market.
3. Distain from hotel man when we mention possibly taking a rickshaw from the city centre.
4. Took rickshaw to the Magic Maze Rock Garden filled with canyons, temples, statuaries, and figurines entirely constructed from roadside garbage.
5. Magic garden is surreal. Find young couples making out behind various stone structures.
6. Swing on swing.
7. Have two young men ask to take a photo with us.
8. Have two more young men ask to take a photo with us, puts arm around Karen.
9. Have an older man want a picture just with Nathan.
10. Have two students want pictures with us; they get blocked for putting their arms around Karen by Nathan’s protective arm after one tries to go for the reach-around boob grab.
11. Everyone stares at us.
12. No, I mean everyone stares at us.
13. Walk to ‘temples of democracy;’ relatively unimpressed by buildings, but very impressed by the sheer quantity of ineffective barbed wire fencing.
14. Take rickshaw to city centre; have to stop at police checkpoint to ask for directions.
15. Coffee in 70s diner with waiters wearing dishcloth erections on their heads and broad green belts.
16. Walk out of capitalist playland (large open-air mall with multiple iterations of glossy multi-national stores and thousands of people) into desert of fallen consumption (large multi-story concrete buildings that look as if they have been bombed, with the only sign of life being men bathing in water fountains and the ubiquitous rickshaw drivers).
17. Stumble upon nightclub, into which young people in absurd western 80s clothing are going into at 4:30 in the afternoon, lured in by loud thumping of western rock and roll.
18. See constipated dog. Saddened.
19. Stumble upon a body building competition on the street. Lots of muscle men wearing black speedos with oil and red body paint slapping each other on the inner thigh.
20. Karen is tempted to ask for a photo with nearly naked, greased up men. Nathan succeeds in convincing her not to act upon such a death wish.
21. Somehow, us being fully dressed merits our getting cat called by near naked Indian men.
22. Try to go to an internet café, get Nathan’s drivers licence inspected and noted, but cannot get internet.
23. Have Patron Saint of Chandigarh accost us on street and give us directions to a chemist and bestow bejewelled bangle upon Karen’s slender wrist, for good luck.
24. Watched Bugs Bunny in Hindi while eating dinner in ‘classy’ hotel.

Total number of times asked if we wanted a rickshaw: 8 billion.

Total number of photos taken: 9

Total number of bangle ceremonies performed: 1

29 October 2007:

1. Coffee at Café Coffee Day, ordered directly from the menu, that required two attempts and at least five consultations between entire fleet of staff before it could be procured by the manager. Tried ordering at least four food stuffs, none of which were available, and given questioning looks from waiter for not having any food.
2. Indian lunch buffet where everything, I mean everything, is explained, as if we had never seen food before. (“This is rice,” as he points at large tray of white rice).
3. “You’re a tourist”….Quote from Indo-Canadian woman on first trip back to India with family in 25 years, to enormous white blond guy taking pictures of palm trees at highway rest stop. “You’re from Vancouver!” …Quote from Indo-Canadian woman on first trip back to India with family in 25 years, to pale-faced woman fixing hair in bathroom at highway rest stop, working off tip given by American faux husband in parking lot.
4. Get ejected from bus at undisclosed location in Amritsar. Pack of rickshaw drivers that would make hyenas look like sloths descend on pair of white folks, while completely ignoring large groups of NRIs who clearly have large sums of cash and have not been to India in some years.
5. The drunken cycle rickshaw man who wouldn’t die. No matter where we tried to hide, he was always in front of us, blocking our escape across the street and insisting “I help you! I help you!”
6. Crossing the raging river of a street. Nathan manages to ford first, leaving Karen afraid and alone on the other side, trying to prevent loss of toes from passing motorcycles. Karen narrowly avoids pushing over family of five on motorcycle when they block her one chance of getting across.
7. Karen twists an ankle while trying to cross next street, falls into the road unable to stand up, and gets comfort from a gaggle of Sikh men offering water, tea, and brief respite from the remainder of Amritsar.
8. Giving up, taking a rickshaw almost to the wrong hotel – giving a rickshaw driver directions in a town we have never been in.
9. Getting to the hotel, shopping around, making the wrong choice because we’re cheap ass. Taking the downstairs room with no balcony because of assured hot water on ground floor.
10. Request filtered water from hotel man. He instructs “Boy” to fill the bottles. Boy returns shyly, silently and always looking at the floor, with filled water bottles.
11. Eat Thai food for dinner in strange “French” restaurant. Waiter whispers in Nathan’s ear to inquire whether he would like beer. Karen later asks out loud for a beer, and waiter moves in to keep the conversation surreptitious. Bill arrives, and the man is told that the bill was not printed because there was no VAT added.
12. Hormones + Events of the Day = Karen crying into Nathan’s shoulder for no apparent reason. Nathan is thankfully patient and gracious.

30 October 2007:

1. Slept late, didn’t leave hotel room until noon.
2. Uneventful afternoon, until we decided to visit India-Pakistan border closing ceremony, along with several thousand other spectators. Watch military officials with Chinese fans on their heads face off against black-clad, bad-ass-looking Pakistani military officials with Chinese fans on their heads in an elaborate big dick contest, while sweaty man in black t-shirt riles crowd into patriotic frenzy. School children and middle aged couples take turns rushing the border gate carrying Indian flags. Gender-separated bangra dancing in front of crowed yelling “HINDUSTAN!!!”
3. Ride home in back of overstuffed jeep, during which Nathan gets knee stroked by the only Indian man lankier than himself.
4. Request drinking glasses from “Boy”, who proceeds to pick up two dirty glasses from shelf, rinse under mystery water from bucket while rubbing inside with grubby fingers, and present them to Karen.
5. Visit Jimmy Jimmy Ice Cream Zone for dessert, where Nathan is presented with a butterscotch sundae with radioactive yellow wafer dragon carefully constructed and perched proudly atop scoops of ice cream.
6. Karen questions hotel staff about lack of hot water, in her best assertive tone, only to be assured that there is only hot water from five to six am. Assertive Karen, desperately in need of hot shower, barely refrains from turning into assaultive Karen, but receives assurance that “Boy” will come in 10 minutes, which led to the question, “What will Boy do in 10 minutes?” In ten minutes, there is hot water. No sign of Boy.

31 October 2007:

1. Waking at five to go to the Golden Temple.
2. Saying no to our first photograph.
3. Getting accosted at massacre museum by group of curious young men.
4. Visiting the ‘modern shopping center’
5. Eating the Punjabi Five pizza (5 toppings: corn, tomato, onion, green pepper, and French fries. Yes, French fries.) Served with ketchup.
6. Nathan accidentally tries to kill Karen with mislabelled unsatisfying chocolate bar.
7. Nathan performing own personal musical, complete with show tunes, during stupidly short rickshaw ride to gelateria.
8. Awkardly entering contact lens and eye clinic to purchase lenses, to be shuffled in ahead of screaming boy with severe eye wound despite pleas that “I think he was here first.”
9. Experiencing the awkward yet elaborate wine pouring ritual during splurge on nice dinner in fancy hotel.
10. Trying churi nan, which resembled a pita wrap filled with maraschino cherries and marshmallow fluff.
11. Being victim of a drive-by groping during rickshaw ride home.
12. Pay same amount for 3 nights in hotel as for one nice dinner in fancy hotel.

1 November 2007:

1. Rickshaw to bus terminal.
2. Discover that the bus ride to Dharamsala is 7 hours on the “ordinary” bus.
3. Rickshaw to train station to avoid 7 hour bus ride.
4. Purchasing 2 tickets for Rs38 for 3-hour train ride.
5. Watching helplessly as train arrives, is full before coming to complete stop, and leaves 2 whiteys and many Indians in its dust as it pulls away from the station.
6. Rickshaw back to bus terminal.
7. Watching man weighing approximately 2/3 of Karen’s weight effortlessly carry bag weighing approximately 2/3 of Karen’s weight on his head to the top of the bus. We pay him 50 cents for his efforts.
8. Seven hour trip on the “ordinary” bus, during which bus stops for 15 minutes while many men urinate together on the roadside.
9. Changing to local bus and careening up steep mountain roads after dark, to be dropped at random roadside alley next to screaming drunk man sitting in middle of street.

Ultimately, we left Punjab, but are still drunk on India.

A series of unfortunate events

For some reason, I’ve had the great misfortune to experience much more of the Indian male attitude toward western women recently. I’m not sure if it’s the places I’ve been going, if I’m just tired of pretending it’s not happening, if the extremely tall blond man I’ve been travelling with attracts more attention, or if I’ve lost some of my precious inner bitch, but there’s something up. I have been gawked at and leered at by groups of giggling school boys or obnoxious young men more in the last week than I have been in all my travels in India over the last year. I almost always wear very modest Indian clothing, and everything I wear seems to be looser than what most of the local women have on.

In Chandigarh, men and boys would stop and stare and jeer openly. I experimented with different reactions: glaring back, pretending not to notice, looking away, and nothing seemed to make a difference. Strange men were asking to have their picture taken and attempting the reach-around-boob-grab before shaking my hand (which apparently is considered a come-on here). Going anywhere in Punjab seemed to attract more unwanted attention than navigating the touristy streets of Udaipur, which involved walking a gauntlet of leering shopkeepers who seemed to remember my every move when I was alone and took no notice of me when I was with a man. The absolute winner in the “Western Women are Easy and Thus Not Deserving of Any Personal Space or Respect” contest was the drive-by groping I fell victim to in Amritsar. A friend and I were riding back to our guest house in a cycle rickshaw late one evening. I was wearing conservative Indian dress, including a shawl covering my head and entire upper body. A man drove by us on a motorcycle, and as he passed us he slowed down and reached out a hand to grope my side. I’m not talking about a quick touch of the fingers as he sped past. This was a full-on, slow-motion hand wrapped around my ribcage, sliding forward going for the chest grab. I yelled a few choice words as he sped away, but he was too quick for me to reach out and grab that wayward arm and yank him off his moving bike for his affront to my dignity.

It's too bad that has become the most memorable part of my trip to Amritsar, because there really is a lot of beauty there - not the least of which is the Golden Temple. An impressive place, not just for the beauty of the temple itself, but for what happens there. They have a massive kitchen, and feed anyone who comes through, regardless of background, caste, or religion. No questions asked. No money required. We had a great meal - all you can eat - of rice and chapati and dal. It's simple food, but it's good, clean, and healthy. After eating, we were allowed to wander into the kitchen where thousands of chapatis are rolled and huge vats of dal are brewing all day long. The amazing Indian hospitality is such a beautiful contrast to the hassles of street life here.

Thoughts on Foods

Just a few thoughts on some of my adventures in eating so far here in India. Photos to come once I get to a decent internet connection....

Sugar

People here put sugar in everything. I have consumed more sugar in the last month than I have in the last year. The little place where I took breakfast on my way to Hindi school in Mussoorie sells chocolate waffles. I'm not kidding. They are full of chocolate syrup, and they break up Cadbury's chocolate and put a little bit in every square on the waffle and serve it all with chocolate sauce. It's crazy. I have so far refrained from such a sugar buzz first thing in the morning, but the novelty is tempting. It’s reminiscent of the chocolate cakes they always served at the breakfast buffets in Brazil.

Jaggery

I have a new favourite comfort food. Jaggery. It’s solid molasses. You can carry it in your pocket and chomp off a bite whenever you want. What more can I say about this little bit of heaven on earth?

Milk

I was horrified the other day after a conversation with Rani, our Hindi tutor in Mussoorie. We were sitting having tea at Chaar Dukand (literally, Four Shops), about halfway up the hill between the town and the Hindi school. The milk man was walking down from the hills carrying his metal jugs of milk. He carries these on his back in a net made from crude jute rope that loops around the front of his forehead. Some of them also use mules. The milk man stopped outside the tea shop and refilled some of his jugs from a bucket of water that was sitting by the side of the road. Rani said that he stops there every day to adulterate his milk; he waters it down to about half its full thickness before he gets to town. Anil, the man who owns one of the tea shops, puts out the buckets of water (which, not surprisingly, is not purified) for the milk man to use. It’s completely out in the open and accepted. Even more shocking is that Anil buys the adulterated milk from this man! Rani said that all the milk sold in the town is adulterated. The only way to get pure milk is to buy the horrible UHT milk from Amul (the national dairy cooperative) which has had the life sucked out of it by the high-temperature sterilization process, or to know (and trust)somebody in the village who has a cow and get milk directly from them. I had noticed that the chai seemed a lot more watery, and the consistency was inconsistent. (How’s that for an oxymoron?) I mentioned this story to my friend Ramesh, who owns a farm near Dharamsala, and he said it’s the same situation here.

Just one more reason to keep things local and know where our food comes from!

Curd

Curd is the English word for dahi, which is the Hindi word for yoghurt. I am more convinced than ever that curd is the elixir of life. OK, maybe it’s not an elixir, but doesn’t that have a nicer ring to it than semi-gelatinous white goop? Anyway, I’m a big fan of curd. At home, I make my own and eat it every day. And I firmly believe that it should always be made out of the freshest local milk you can get. I’ve been convinced that the best way to avoid nasty GI issues when travelling is to eat lots of yoghurt and take acidophilus tablets (the friendly bacterial culture that makes milk into yoghurt) before leaving home, and to eat as much local yoghurt as you can wherever you end up. Normally, I eat vast amounts of curd in India. Definitely every day, and every meal if I can get it. The very few times I’ve had any stomach issues while travelling in India have been after a day or two without curd. Twice on this trip there have been short times before I’ve found a good curd source in a new town. The first time resulted in vomiting, and the second in the dreaded liquid ass.

Veg/Non-Veg

One thing that I love about the way people talk about food here is that "Veg" (the Hinglish world for vegetarian) is considered the norm. All menus are divided into Veg and Non-Veg sections. If you don't specify, people might ask to make sure you want "non-veg", because this is a little different. The use of the qualifier "non" makes the consumption of flesh somehow secondary to vegetarian diets, unlike in the west where vegetarian is still considered a little freakish in many places. I don't mean to sound like a righteous vegetarian here, especially considering my recent experimentation with omnivorous consumption patterns, but it's refreshing to see the primarily plant based diet taking the predominant, normalized place in the culture.

Mishti Dohi

This is an amazing Bengali sweet. I'm not much for India sweets, on account of my general distaste for sugar and the Indian tendency to put as much sugar as possible into all things, but I will go to great lengths to seek this one out. The name means "smoked curd," which admittedly sounds awful. It's sweetened yoghurt made in a little single-serving earthen pot, which is then somehow smoked. It's just a little bit sweet, very creamy, and has a very distinctive flavour - not quite yoghurt, not quite pudding, but oh so yummy. Sadly, it's hard to find outside Bengal, where I've never been. I was introduced to it by Shakti Maira, a Delhi artist and son of my friend Usha. Shakti is not a cruel man, so he also told me the best place in Delhi to find mishti dohi: Annapurna Sweets in the DDA Market near Gulmohar Park. The best one I've found yet though, was at the Britannia Restaurant in Mumbai. It's a Parsi place, but they must have bribed a few Bengalis to get this recipe.

The meaning of healthy

I've come across a few health food stores so far in my travels in India. There aren't many out there, and those that are there are, well, a little strange. In general, there seems to be either a focus on simple organic foods, or else a slightly disturbing illustration of how the nutrition science and food processing industries are taking control over ideas of what makes food good to eat. Health food stores appear to be the place to go for imported processed foods - wholesome products like McCain frozen french fries and Cadbury chocolate, not to mention Coke and even microwave popcorn. Health food seems to mean hygienic food, which seems to mean processed, controlled, uniform, and packaged. Even the organic packaged foods often contained “permitted colours” or “permitted preservatives.” I suppose they are healthier than the banned ones. It’s a start for sure, but a little distressing, especially when the traditional foods of the place are in general fresh, wholesome, and free of artificial ingredients.

I've also seen quite a few products that are tailored to specific diets, usually gluten-free or diabetic. In a way, it's great to see these kinds of products becoming available. However, it is a little distressing to see that “health food” means processed food. Traditional Indian food would fit well into a diabetic diet, as long as one stays away from too much gulab jaman and rasgullah. As for gluten free, it could be tough in northern states where wheat-based breads like chapatti, nan, or roti are a dietary staples, but rice is widely eaten at just about every meal and could easily replace the breads. Even better, older grains that have largely been forgotten (certain varieties of corn, millets, and amaranth) make interesting breads that are naturally gluten free. More disconcerting is that all the gluten-free or diabetic products I’ve seen so far have been altered versions of western foods — cookies, pancakes, crackers, sweets, condiments, and other snack foods.

The first place I found resembling a health food store is the Navdanya retail outlet in Delhi. It's attached to the Navdanya Slow Food Cafe in the Hauz Khas enclave of New Delhi (they also have one in the Dilli Haat market and several other Delhi neighbourhoods). The Navdanya outlets primarily sell organic dry goods grown by Navdanya farmers across India. There is a pretty good selection of spices, dals, rice, wheat flour, forgotten grains such as millets and amaranth, as well as pickles, jams, squashes (juice concentrates), and oils produced by women's groups in some of the villages where Navdanya works. They also sell tulsi teas from Organic India, some soaps and personal care products from the Khadi label, handmade paper, and natural incense from Auroville. It's a pretty basic set-up, and caters mostly to people who already know about organic and seek out these products. There isn't much of a store-front, and the outlets tend to be outside of major market areas. They rely on memberships and word of mouth. Most of the products are their own brand.

FabIndia sells its own line or organic foods and personal care products. They seem to be mostly basics like grains and dals, cereals, pickles and jams, and soaps and creams. Like the foods, many of the natural or herbal personal care products I’ve seen contain potentially dangerous preservatives like parabens. We find the same stuff in so-called natural products in North America as well.

In Chandigarh I came across a shop called Whole Foods. The name seems to come from a line of natural food products manufactured in Delhi by a company with the same name. Judging by the design of the labels, I don't think the name "Whole Foods" is a coincidence. The store was a really interesting mix of products. About the half the store was filled with organic cereals, grains, teas, and baked goods, all sourced from within the region or country. There were also ayurvedic and herbal skin care products. The rest of the store was stocked with sugar cereals with health claims on the label, western brands of skin care products, and things like ketchup, mayonnaise, and salad dressing (some imported, some local and dairy free).

In Amritsar, I wandered into a health food shop to be met with a display of imported chocolate bars, Lays chips, and Pepsi. Next to these was a shelf of gluten-free and diabetic products and imported colognes (apparently Calvin Klein now makes “healthy” perfumes…). I even found ayurvedic breast enhancing cream. Tempting… (it said “all-natural”).

Return to India

It’s hard to believe it was almost a month ago that I arrived in Delhi in the middle of the night, feeling a little jet-lagged but otherwise pretty good. It was really nice to be able to help out a Canadian traveller on her first visit to India before I even got out of the airport. Somehow she had sensed that this wasn’t my first time here. When I walked out into the Delhi night at 3am and felt that steamy, hot, sticky air, thick with the sensation of burning garbage and diesel fumes (and it is so much more a feeling than a smell), I felt strangely at home. I guess Delhi is the closest thing I have to a home right now since I gave up my apartment in Vancouver. I at least have an address in this place.

I quickly got out of the city and headed for the Navdanya organic farm in the beautiful Doon Valley near Dehradun, in the state of Uttarkand. I took a course called Food Safety and Food Security with Vandana Shiva, Marion Nestle, Mira Shiva, and others, and met some fabulous new friends. I’m now in Mussoorie, a relatively small town clinging to the foothills of the Himalayas, completing a two-week course of Hindi classes at the Landour Language School. On my first night here, I stood outside my little cottage and looked across the valley at the massive mountains, with the most spectacular red sunset you could ever imagine: tiny sliver of a silver moon floating just above the horizon. This place is almost indescribable.

I do appreciate how good my life is right now. I have to keep reminding myself that I am here for work, because I'm having such a good time. Every day I go to sleep knowing that tomorrow will be completely different than any other day I've experienced. These days are strange and surreal, sometimes a little frustrating, but never, never dull. All the apprehension I was feeling before leaving has gone, and I once again have that feeling of being more alive now that I'm settled in here. I have lost a lot of my blind amour for the country, as I am seeing more the faults and wrinkles in this strange and sometimes oppressive culture. But I still feel like it's the right place to be, for me, right now. This is of course despite the fact that I detest the way that, as a woman, I am either gawked at when alone, or rendered invisible when walking with a male friend. Still, there is something about this place that makes me feel so alive, so comfortable in my own skin. I can't explain why or how, and maybe it's best if I never really figure that out.

Maybe it's just a feeling of being closer to "god" (whatever that means!), which I guess is the same as being closer to oneself. Or maybe it's just the elevation in Mussoorie (2800m, and cold too).

Supermarkets in Delhi

This was written for Vandana Shiva's quarterly journal "Bija," but I foolishly missed the publication deadline........

As someone who has lived most of her life in North America, the supermarket is a familiar sight. Until recent years, I found them almost comforting. I could go to any city or town in North America and find a store that sold almost every kind of food imaginable. Aside from a few minor cosmetic variations, the stores and even their contents were virtually all the same. The stores were relatively large, with wide aisles lined with the same brands of packaged, canned, and frozen foods. Dairy products and meat would be in the back, and fresh produce were inevitably at the side of the store farthest from the entrance. I could navigate my shopping cart through the aisles of any store with remarkable predictability and rarely had difficulty finding whatever I might be looking for. When I was finished, there would be a long row of cashiers waiting to take my money and put my purchases in disposable plastic bags.

As I grew more aware of the politics and ecology of food, I gradually became more concerned about the amount of waste created by these large stores. They required huge paved parking lots to hold the cars that brought the customers. They used vast amounts of electric power to run the air conditioners in summer, the heaters in winter, and to keep the huge open freezers and refrigerators running. The foods seemed to contain more packaging than food, and the plastic shopping bags piled up faster than I could reuse or recycle them. Then I started reading the ingredients on the food packages, and began to stay as much at the edges of the grocery store as possible, where they keep the fresh produce and dairy. As I became even more aware of the food I was eating, where it had come from, and who was profiting from it, I began to shy away from the supermarkets in favour of my local farmers' market. I enjoyed the busy, bustling trip to the market every Saturday morning, and I particularly liked meeting the people who grew the food I was about take home and cook.

What may seem surprising to most people in India is the fact that I consider it a privilege to shop at the farmers' market. I go out of my way to buy food this way, even though there is always a supermarket a closer my house. Going to the market means shopping at prescribed times and sometimes paying more money for my food. To me, the personal connection with the farmers, the knowledge about what I am really buying, the freshness, and the feeling of empowerment I get from stepping outside the corporate food system is liberating and empowering, even as a busy university student living on a tight budget. I feel lucky just to have a farmers' market in my city. Although they are becoming more popular, many towns in North America don't have farmers' markets. In the city where I lived as a child, the only place to get food is from a big supermarket.

When I am in India, one of the things that gives me great pleasure is food. I love the flavours and the freshness. I love how easy it is to find healthy vegetarian meals. I love the chai and the snacks available from vendors in the markets. And I especially enjoy shopping for food. I take great pleasure in going to the milk stand for dahi, the bakery for sweets, and the market for spices. I can't help but smile when I hear the subji-walla call out today's produce as he wheels his cart past my flat. I don't miss those huge, cold, impersonal, “efficient,” factory-like supermarkets at all.

Given all this, you can imagine my shock when I heard that supermarkets were opening up in cities across India. Was this the death of the small market, the fruit cart, and the neighbourhood vegetable vendors? Was this freshness, convenience, and character going to be given up in favour of generic, air-conditioned supermarkets owned by large corporations that sell more packaged than fresh foods? I had to see some of these stores for myself to get an idea of what was coming.

My first stop, in April 2007, was at a Reliance Fresh outlet in the Delhi suburb of Faridabad, one of nine stores opened in the capital region since January. Rather than being located in a market, the Fresh store was in a small shopping complex with underground parking on a busy road. There were no other shops in the immediate vicinity. Above the flyover next to the shopping complex was a huge billboard advertising the bargains and convenience offered at Subhiksha, a similar chain of grocery stores. When I first entered the Fresh store, I was strangely relieved and disappointed at the same time. The store was about the size of a small restaurant – hardly the massive hypermarket I was expecting. (Some can be as large as a skating rink or sports arena. One popular Brazilian supermarket chain is even named “Big.”)

Basically, the Fresh store was a pared down copy of a typical western grocery store. Although smaller, the feeling and look of the store was very North American. The security guard at the stop entrance didn't ask me to leave my bag with him while shopping. There were employees handing out plastic shopping baskets to customers on the way into the store. They even had wheeled shopping carts available, which made me immediately aware of the fact that, unlike most shops in India, the goods in the store were displayed on shelves along aisles wide enough to push the shopping carts through. The people inside – mostly women – looked very affluent. Just like back home in Canada, the produce was kept off to the side, so that I had to walk through aisles of packaged foods in order to reach the fresh fruits and vegetables.

On the self-service shelves there were a lot of basic dry goods like rice, flour, and sugar. I noticed half an aisle of various forms of sugar, which seemed far out of proportion to the amounts of staples such as grains. There were also instant dosas, parantha mixes, pickles, biscuits, and chutneys with brand names like “Mother's Pride” and “Maggi.” There were also some American-style products such as ketchup, mustard, and relish. Some products were made in India, while many others were imported from other Asian countries. There was salad dressing imported from the United States, which contained the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup, an ingredient that is apparently not yet used in food manufacturing India. American brands of soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi were made in India and contained sugar. The North American versions of these and most other packaged foods no longer contain any real sugar, which has all been replaced by corn-based sweeteners. These corn sweeteners have been associated with numerous health problems including obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders.

Once I made it through the packaged food aisles to the fresh produce, I again noticed a striking similarity to western supermarkets. Fruits and vegetables were displayed in wooden crates slanted outward for a better view. Prices of most items were posted on signs along with the name of the food and a UPC barcode. Some of the items were local, but many of these so-called fresh foods were imported from outside India. I even found red delicious apples grown in Washington State on the west coast of the US. These are the very same apples that can be found in any supermarket in North America. They even had the same identifying sticker on every individual apple. When caught taking photos by a manager, I was told that taking pictures was against company policy. I was welcome to walk around and “enjoy the ambiance” of the store, but I would not be permitted to photograph anything. No reason was ever given for this policy. I did get in a few good shots before I had to put my camera away.

The prices on the produce were per kilogram, and were given in rupees and paisas, which seemed highly unusual to me. Nobody charges Rs14.45 for anything; it's usually Rs14 or Rs15, if prices are fixed at all. I could only guess that this was done to resemble the way prices are posted in North America, in dollars and cents (because the smaller denominations are commonly used there). Perhaps it is a way to increase the price slightly while still having it appear low, as is commonly done in the west. Most people focus on the first number (e.g., Rs14) and don't pay attention to the amount after the decimal point. This adds up if you are purchasing several kilos of a product, but we tend not to think about that.

On my way toward the cash registers, I passed by the frozen food section. There were a few large, stand-up glass-front freezers displaying frozen packaged foods. There were frozen paranthas and other instant meals along with a variety of frozen vegetables. I even found McCain Superfries, a pre-cooked frozen French fry product made by a Canadian company that recently opened a factory in Gujarat state. (Most of the French fries made in this factory are destined for McDonald's restaurants across India). Near the store's exit were about three or four checkout counters where Fresh employees scanned barcodes and packed customers' purchases in disposable plastic shopping bags. The cashier lines were set up so that anyone waiting in line would be standing next to a display of chewing gum, candy, and chocolate bars from Cadbury and Nestle.

********

Although relieved that the Reliance Fresh store I visited wasn't a sprawling hypermarket, I wasn't convinced they didn't exist somewhere in Delhi. I visited several others in Delhi and surrounding areas, and all were quite similar. Some of the Delhi outlets were in busy market areas as well as on major roads, and most were about 2000 square feet in size. I still wanted to see a hypermarket, so I hired a car and set out for Gurgaon. Here I found Spencer's Hypermarket, part of the first hypermarket chain in India. Spencer's is an Indian chain started by a Britain 140 years ago. It was part of a large, busy suburban shopping mall. Once inside, I felt like I had immediately left Asia—I could have been in any hypermarket in North America (with the exception of the large number of staff available to assist me at Spencer's). This was a massive store offering everything from books and CDs to groceries, toys, appliances, ready-made western clothing, and mobile phones.

The grocery section was in the middle of the huge store, and the fresh produce was in the middle of the food section. It was surrounded by frozen foods, packaged products, cleaning products, and international foods such as British and American biscuits, potato chips, sauces, canned goods, and bottled drinks. The foods were predominantly packaged, and were a mix of desi and imported. I saw familiar brands from home like Ragu tomato sauce, Nabisco biscuits, Kraft, Quaker Oats, Nestle, Ritz Crackers, Oreo cookies, and McCain frozen French fries. I even found Nestle ghee for sale. Many traditional Indian foods were dressed up as western foods: frozen, instant mixes, and other types of “heat and serve” preparations. The entire store was immaculate. There was also a ready to eat pizza stand called US Pizza. It seemed that the ideals of hygiene and convenience were for sale more so than food.

I wanted to take some photos of the Spencer's store, but again photography is against company policy. Here, “No photos allowed” was posted on a sign at the entrance. One thing that really struck me about this store was the prices. The woman in front of me at the checkout line spent nearly Rs2000 for four small bags of groceries. I purchased a bottle of Wish Bone salad dressing (from the US, containing high-fructose corn syrup), a package of McCain frozen potatoes (from the factory in Gujarat), and a small bottle of laundry soap for Rs195.45. The total was rounded down to the nearest five paisas. However, bananas were only Rs2.50 each, and onions were offered at Rs9.50/kg. I couldn't tell whether they were local or imported, although I did find more Washington apples with their familiar stickers.

********

Why am I so concerned about supermarkets in Delhi? What’s wrong with cool, clean stores, fixed prices, and the convenience of one-stop shopping? Nothing, if that’s what it was really about. Supermarkets are convenient, and comfortable, and they can be cheaper than shopping at smaller shops. But it is important to think about what is being given up in exchange for these things. Entire books have been written about this issue, but I’ll keep it brief here.

Some of the people most affected when supermarkets become the predominant source of food are the small shopkeepers. Inevitably, local markets, bakers, and vendors can’t compete with the whole package offered by supermarkets. They can’t offer everything in one place. They don’t have the huge buying power of a large chain, and eventually they can’t compete in price either. Eventually, these small neighbourhood shops close and more than just a few local jobs are lost. We loose the connection to community that comes with buying from the local market. We loose a part of our culture. Sometimes whole market areas close down and we are left with no place to shop except the supermarket. (Recall how lucky I feel to have the option to shop at a farmers’ market in my city in Canada.) When we lose that choice we lose a lot of power. When we have no option but to shop at the supermarket, the corporations running the supermarkets get to decide what to sell, where they get it from, and what to charge. We can’t go in and ask the clerk to bring back that particular variety of melon or apple that we love but haven’t seen in years. We have to buy the Washington apple with the little sticker on it.

All those processed packaged foods for sale in supermarkets come with more than just convenience. They come with excess packaging that fills up the landfills and litters the streets. They are manufactured in factories that pollute and drain the water supply. They also contain preservatives and artificial ingredients that have been linked with cancer, obesity diabetes, and other health problems that affect a growing number of Indians. They contain excessive amounts of fat and salt. What seems at first like efficiency and modernization can have unwanted consequences.

Finally, we can’t forget about the impacts of all this on local farmers and biodiversity. Big supermarket chains need a constant supply of foods, which means they prefer to buy from large farms. Because they are the major buyer, they also get to dictate the price and the conditions of sale. Seasons don’t mean much in the world of supermarkets. Many people in the west where supermarkets are more prevalent don’t even realize that fruits and vegetables are seasonal. We have a constant supply of everything, because it is imported from wherever it happens to be in season. While this may seem good for the consumer, it means eating food that has traveled long distances, and that has been grown from seed bred or engineered to produce durable (as opposed to tasty or nutritious) foods. This reliance on imports, while possibly less healthy than eating fresh, seasonal produce, has important environmental impacts. Shipping perishable foods around the world produces a lot of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. The focus on durable varieties and consistent supply is a risk to biodiversity. If the supermarkets only want two varieties of potato, farmers stop growing the other varieties because they can’t sell them.

Ultimately, all these issues relate to control, which is unbalanced in favour of the corporations that own the supermarket chains. Farmers and consumers are forced to adapt to the needs of the corporation, while being told that we are being offered more and more choices. What we have now realized in the west is that the seemingly endless choices on offer at the supermarket are really just the same few ingredients in different packages, and it becomes harder to find real, fresh food. Is it really worth giving up sovereignty over our food supply for a little bit of convenience and air conditioning?

Food for Thought

This is a piece that emerged out of a conversation I had with Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence, in December 2006. It's available on the Editor's Choice page here.
Resurgence is a fabulous UK-based journal focusing on ecological and spiritual issues. It is associated with Schumacher College in Devon.

There is no point in innovation for its own sake – innovation must have a purpose. Innovation in the food industry is actually damaging the quality of food.

INNOVATION. IT’S A word we hear a lot these days. Modern society worships innovation. Governments have programmes and policies to promote innovation. There are endless books on and awards for innovation. It must be a good thing, right?

To answer this question, consider a few recent innovations in ‘value-added’ foods. A few examples: a microwavable version of tinned soup that’s designed to fit in your car’s cup holder and be drunk directly out of the container – no spoon required; fat free potato crisps, thanks to a synthesized form of cooking oil that can’t be digested; and even edible food wraps – no need to waste time unwrapping that plastic film from your sandwich.

But what makes something truly innovative? The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the word innovate as “to bring in novelties; make changes in.” To be truly innovative, I propose that we must consider two things. First, is the change real, or is it simply superficial? Innovation requires real change. It should be more than a fresh paint job or re-arranging the furniture. Every year, almost 20,000 new products show up on the grocery store shelves. Increasingly, these “new foods” consist predominantly of the same few ingredients: corn, soy, and wheat. They have new names, new packaging, new marketing campaigns, and new appeal, but they aren’t really different. Most food products that appear on supermarket shelves are simply new ways of assembling the same things, without making any improvements.

This brings me to the second consideration for evaluating whether something is really innovative: motivation. We need to examine not only the changes in the product itself – but also the driving forces behind those changes. There is innovation for profit, and innovation for improvement. Implicit in the concept of innovation is some degree of improvement, but somehow that familiar marketing claim of ‘New and Improved’ seems to have given way to simple exclamations of ‘New!’ on the front of the box. That seems to be all it takes to convince people to try something. Most new products on the grocery shelves don't offer a better option for people, but a better profit for the food industry. Many new products are introduced to encourage us to buy more, eat more, and ultimately increase the profits of the food corporations. Who really benefits from a new colour of soft drink or flavour of chewing gum? The teenager who drinks more of the sugary concoction, or the manufacturer whose sales suddenly skyrocket as they stand out from the mass of other drinks already on the store shelves?

“No one was clamouring for synthetic cheese, or a cereal shaped like a bowling pin; processed food has become largely a supply-driven business—the business of figuring out clever ways to package and market the glut of commodities coming off the farm and out of the wet mills.”

Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

Photos: Daylesford Organic GIVEN SOCIETY’S APPARENT worship of innovation at all costs, I think it’s time we moved beyond a literal definition of the word to evaluate the substance, or ethics behind new innovations. Food corporations, by definition, constantly try to increase their profits, which means increasing sales and decreasing costs. This can be done by increasing the size of the market, by encouraging the existing market to consume more, or by using cheaper raw materials. Historically, food sales increased as incomes rose and a largely undernourished population could better feed itself. People started to make money and could afford to buy more and better food. This was a good thing when folks weren’t getting enough to eat, or if they were eating substandard food (as was often the case in Europe or North America around the turn of the last century). As food companies and producers competed for the growing marketplace, quality and value would have been good selling points. Better foods would sell more, and companies dealing in them would make more money. Arguments about the ethics of food commodification aside, this wasn’t such a bad situation.

For the past twenty-five years or so, food markets in industrialized countries have been more or less saturated; that is, people have been eating as much as they can. While good for people, this isn’t good for an industry measured in growth. Food companies now have to compete for a bigger share of the existing market. They do this by encouraging us to eat more, and by offering “new” products. As Harvey Levenstein put it in his book Revolution at the Table, “....one of the keys to food advertising in advanced industrial countries: that once individuals ingest an adequate number of calories in their diets, most changes in food consumption will be the result of the substitution of one food for another”

Just look at all the things we can buy to eat now that didn’t exist twenty years ago. There are so many kinds of breakfast cereal that they now take up an entire aisle in most grocery markets. If you look at the ingredients, you will find they are more or less the same, just extruded into different shapes with different names and labels. In deciding whether this is truly innovative, we have to ask the question “Are we better off?” Is this year’s cereal better than last? Why has it changed? Who benefits? Given the current epidemic of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, much of which can be credited to our highly processed diets of packaged food products, it’s hard to conclude that all these new products have helped anyone other than the people selling them.

There have been huge innovations in food over the years. The ability to preserve the fruits of our harvest by canning gives us fruits and vegetables through the winter. Better ovens provide fresh tasty bread. Refrigeration, curing, pickling, smoking, and drying prevent foods from going rancid or rotten. Electric stoves are easier to cook with than open fires. Even the discovery of fire, and therefore the ability to cook, was a huge innovation in food. Instant meal bars with long, unintelligible ingredients lists might be convenient, but are they innovative? Industrialized foods like these have been concocted and packaged in so many ways that we can no longer recognise the basic ingredients they are made from. We have become so disconnected from the roots of our food that we don’t know what we are eating, but it’s obvious from our health that what we are eating isn’t good for us.

SO WHAT WOULD make a truly innovative food? It would have to be healthy, most of all. It might be more convenient to prepare without compromising the freshness and wholeness of its ingredients. It would have minimal ecological impact. And it would taste good. Near my home on the west coast of Canada, there is a bakery making bread from native varieties of wheat being grown by a local organic farmer. There are artisan cheese-makers developing cheeses from the milk of an endangered herd of buffalo. There are aboriginal people preparing medicinal teas from traditional wild herbs. These products are healthful. They benefit the ecosystems from which they come. They reconnect people with the land. They are motivated by a love for food, the earth, and well-being, and they build on traditional knowledge and biodiversity. They slow us down and make us think. And they taste fabulous. This is true innovation.