This past Saturday was a whirlwind of a day. We started out our morning with a class lecture in the hotel conference room. Our guest scholar, Anil Varughese, gave an informative lecture about Kerala. He discussed problems such as alcoholism and poverty, but he also looked at the positive changes made in the state. For example, there is now a much lower birth rate and infant mortality rate in Kerala as well as a much higher average life span. This is both in comparison to Kerala’s past statistics and to India’s overall patterns. This is particularly impressive when one considers how much lower the average income is in Kerala as compared to the United States. The life expectancy rate in Kerala is 73.9 years and the infant mortality rate is 15. In 2001, Kerala ranked number one in human development index, out of all significant Indian states, at a level of 0.638.
After our lecture we had a lovely buffet-style Indian lunch on the sixth floor of the hotel, with a beautiful view of the city of Trivandrum. We were overlooking a series of modern buildings juxtaposed with cute little gardens. Then we packed up our trusty tour van, which our guide navigated out of the hotel parking lot like a true master of narrow spaces and headed for the Centre for Development Studies in Trivandrum. We took a tour of the entire campus with a focus on the library. It was a stunning seven-story brick building with a winding spiral staircase and an immaculate organization of the texts. Students engaged in a self-motivated study of a variety of documents and texts related to our environmental research here. At the end of our visit we visited the school cafeteria for tea, which was only six rupees a cup (quite cheap when one considers that forty-six rupees are in every United States dollar). Another student and I chatted with two schoolboys there who talked to us about their educational interests and views. The mission of CDS is “to promote research, teaching and training in disciplines relevant to development”. The architecture of the campus was created by Laurie Baker with the mission in mind to limit the cost of building, use materials from the local environment, don’t use a lot of energy, and don’t do damage to the environment.
Next, we went to a temple and took a tour around the outside of the building where we discovered a man who specialized in the handicraft of carving animals out of sandalwood. Some of the guys on this trip bought matching traditional shirts for excellent prices! Then we were off to the beach in Kovalam for frolicking and a porch dinner overlooking the Indian Ocean. Prior to dinner, a bunch of us were approached on the beach and asked to take pictures with the locals. An onlooker, who was a native but spoke fluent English, explained to us that they were making fun of us, but that they were glad to see us. He added that they would probably treasure the photographs forever and show them off to all of their relatives. A few of us wandered farther down the beach where we encountered some very talkative teenage and adult men. They very politely asked us if it was okay for them to put their arms around us in photographs and we all engaged in a very extensive photo shoot.
We also ended up discussing a variety of topics with them, mostly pertaining to cultural differences. One man asked the females of our group if we were married. He then went on to say that marriage is no life for a woman. We asked him if he was married and he said that he was. We then asked him if he loved his wife. He replied “No, it wasn’t a love match; it was an arranged marriage”. While he misunderstood the question, taking it as an inquiry about what type of marriage he was in, instead of his emotional state, his answer revealed a great deal to us about the sad nature of a lot of marriages here in India. The women are not highly valued in certain Indian communities, particularly in rural areas. Consequently, there are high rates of infanticide and feticide, particularly with female babies. Girls who are given a chance at life often live in constant preparation for marriage and are taught stereotypically female skills such as cooking and cleaning. Then their fathers complain over how much their dowries cost, when they are sold off into arranged marriage. This certainly isn’t the case in every family and some arranged marriages lead to unmatched bliss because the marriage is based off of rationalized calculations. On the contrary, marriages centered on raw passion can often explode in a highly unfavorable way. It was a very powerful experience for me to learn about both the positives and the negatives of having an arranged marriage. Getting out and seeing the Kerala model in action was all the more profound after hearing Anil Varghese’s lecture.
We also ended up discussing a variety of topics with them, mostly pertaining to cultural differences. One man asked the females of our group if we were married. He then went on to say that marriage is no life for a woman. We asked him if he was married and he said that he was. We then asked him if he loved his wife. He replied “No, it wasn’t a love match; it was an arranged marriage”. While he misunderstood the question, taking it as an inquiry about what type of marriage he was in, instead of his emotional state, his answer revealed a great deal to us about the sad nature of a lot of marriages here in India. The women are not highly valued in certain Indian communities, particularly in rural areas. Consequently, there are high rates of infanticide and feticide, particularly with female babies. Girls who are given a chance at life often live in constant preparation for marriage and are taught stereotypically female skills such as cooking and cleaning. Then their fathers complain over how much their dowries cost, when they are sold off into arranged marriage. This certainly isn’t the case in every family and some arranged marriages lead to unmatched bliss because the marriage is based off of rationalized calculations. On the contrary, marriages centered on raw passion can often explode in a highly unfavorable way. It was a very powerful experience for me to learn about both the positives and the negatives of having an arranged marriage. Getting out and seeing the Kerala model in action was all the more profound after hearing Anil Varghese’s lecture.Sources:
http://www.cds.edu/
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