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| This week I will have to open myself to more potential criticism for falling back
on anthropology that seems rather colonial. I was also not terribly helpful to a
servant who had to deal with 2 small zamindar children. We had a scare in the village
when one of my good friends had a mild heart attack. Finally the Bhalot cricket team
is continuing it's winning streak in the local tournament. The last thing I should
mention is that while I am very happy to be here this extended field work does come
with some price tags: this week my sister got married and I missed it. Due to heat and my complete lack of Pushto I have opted for delegated interviews. I wrote out a short questionnaire and printed out several copies of it. I gave the questionnaire and my diskman to a young Pathan who lives in the village. The idea is that he conducts the interviews in Pushto and then the two of us will go through them and he'll explain what happened. I would like to be present at these interviews but for several reasons that's not really feasible. The local Pathans are far more sensitive about purdah than the Punjabis so conducting the interviews in their houses is not possible (I could insist and they would let me but it would mean their ladies have to sit in a baking room for the duration of the interviews). Interviewing them out of their homes is also problematic because when they're out of their homes they are usually working. They don't tend to socialise in the hotels or hang out in the Maliks' dheras very much. I can not conduct the interviews in Pushto so I am obliged to have an interviewer in any event if I want to get samples of spoken Pushto (which I want). I must admit there is a certain appeal to simply handing out a questionnaire and recorder to someone and sitting in my comfy room and waiting. It remains to be seen if the product is worth having. It may be my own cultural constraints but there is a feeling in me that nothing worth having can be had this easily. I was woken up one morning to the cry of 'Gora Chacha!' (White-man Uncle!). It was 2 little zamindars (3 and 2 years old) who wanted to visit their gora chacha first thing in the morning. The servant girl with them is a remarkable person who maintains a smile 24 hours a day (I suspect-- I don't see her all that often). These 2 children are usually quite well behaved (by any standards but exceptionally well behaved by Pakistani standards). I usually just do all the fun things with these children and when they start to get rowdy leave the chastising and rebuking to others. Normally there is a relative nearby so neither I nor the servant girl have to be the bad guy. Today there were no Maliks around. When the little 3 year old took 50 rupees from my pocket I stupidly let her play with it. When it came time for them to go the servant girl had the unenviable task of retreiving my 50 rupees. This little girl, who is an angel 95% of the time, decided she was not to be parted with her new 50 rupee note. She cried and screamed. I just sat there watching (as is my habit-- I don't intervene with other people's children). The servant finally pried the money from the little girl who screamed bloody murder all the way out of the room. After they left it occurred to me that I should have been the one to take the money back as the little girl is not nearly so familiar with me as she is with the servant. Then it occurred to me that this is not the west and teaching children to respect money in the way I respect it isn't necessary. It doesn't matter if this little girl learns not to take 50 rupees or not since as she grows up if she wants money and takes it from her father's wallet he will not view this as a major infraction. He'll be annoyed because he doesn't have the money if he needs it but within this family the greater crime is to refuse to give money if someone asks. So what I should have done was simply tell the servant girl not to worry about it. Her father would have returned the money as soon as he found out about it and the servant would surely have told him that the little girl had taken money from my pocket. In any event my thoughtlessness created an extra headache for this servant. To my amazement, although the servant was obviously stressed by this she did not lose her incredibly pleasant disposition and continued joking and smiling throughout the incident. One of my very good friends in the village was rushed off to hsopital after a long day driving his uncle and brother around the District. At first I was told he had bruises all over his torso. Then I was told he had pains in the area of his kidneys. Finally someone suggested he had had a heart attack. The heart attack rumour was temporarily quashed when someone else assured me no-- no heart attack, a problem of liver (judging from the area of the body they were pointing to). When the brother returned from the hospital after 2 days he confirmed that it was high blood pressure and high cholesterol. My friend stayed in the hospital for 4 days and from all accounts I'm surprised he ever came back. Air conditioned room with a colour telly and satellite and referigerator in the room. I also got sumptuous descriptions of his menu. In any event half of his family were in the hospital at all times plus several servants so he had pretty much the best of all worlds right there. My friend claims he didn't like any of it though. He came back and has resolved to change his lifestyle. From his description I have concluded that he did indeed have a mild heart attack. We have always enjoyed going for walks occasionally so it will be no disruption for me to start encouraging him to go for walks in the evening. Since apart from being my friend he's also an important informant the walks can be useful times for me to listen to more accounts of village goings-ons. I have said I will not give a blow by blow account of any cricket matches and I will not. I only thought it my duty as a loyal Bhaloti cricket team supporter to mention that they are still undefeated in the Bhaloti World Cup Cricket Tournament. The rumours in the village are that the Pakistani cricket team was paid 80 crore dollars to throw the match (1 crore=10 million). I jokingly asked one of the team members what his price was going to be to throw the final if Bhalot makes it. He assured me that no member of the Bhalot cricket team has a price. Let's hope so because if I do make a bet I'll be betting ON Bhalot not their competitors! My sister, Carolyn, and her boyfriend, Kim, got married on the 26th of June. If I were a Pakistani I'm sure I would have abandoned the field work to attend the wedding but I am not. I have been conditioned to prioritize work-like things and so PhD research took priority over a wedding. This isn't really a criticism of anthropology or of extended field work but it strikes me that membership procedures for getting into this club of anthropologists are sometimes unfair. It's far too expensive to be going back and forth for one week from Asia to Canada (where my sister got married) so I made the choice of staying and continuing here. I know my sister will forgive me so I'm not worried about that but all the same, for all the weddings I've had to attend here and not really enjoyed it would have been nice to go to one that at least was important for me. |
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