Academic Blog 2 - A Plant Tour of MCC

History

This blog summarizes the campus plant walk given by Professor D. Narasimhan of the MCC Biology department on 11/7 at 2PM. He started with the early history of the campus, explaining how it was not originally a prosperous forest. The degraded state of the land was helpful in the college’s negations for its purchase from the government. Starting in 1919, the college leadership began wrangling with the administrators of Selaiyur Forest, and eventually secured a 390 acre tract of poor quality land. Hostel and classroom construction took several years, and he school eventually moved to its current home in 1937.

            Professor Edward Barnes, a chemist by training but a botanist by passion, took over the greening of the campus. Barnes and his wife, who assisted him immensely, never planted saplings, but gathered seeds from their various travels to bring back to MCC. Besides introducing these seeds, they didn’t interfere much with the natural process of biological succession.

The diversity visible on campus today results from nearly 70 years of unhindered growth. Biodiversity comes from birds and bats which imported species from many nearby areas. The vegetation as a whole is not super tall, and many are thorny, an adaptation to grazing and dryness. This type of growth is referred to as a tropical dry evergreen forest. It originally existed in a thin strip along the coast but has been heavily developed so that only about one percent of it remains.

One serious ecological issue plagues MCC today: the deer. The spotted deer we see everywhere on campus are not native, but escaped inside the walls from the neighboring Ghandi national park in the 1980’s. The deer cannot be killed, since gun ownership is illegal and, besides that, hunting on a college campus would never be allowed. The nearby air force base spent 4 lak rupees to round them all up and move them elsewhere, but such funding is not available to MCC. Additionally, like our tour group, the students at MCC have taken a liking for the deer, and would probably resist their removal by any means.

The deer have noticeably affected the forest structure by thinning out the undergrowth because they are approaching the carrying capacity of the campus. This will drastically shift the makeup of the plants because they graze harshly on saplings all but the most unpalatable species. Soon, only the species inappropriate for deer will remain. This represents an unnatural state which good management policies should definitely avoid.

Tour

The following map provides an approximation of our tour route starting from the International Guest House and the plant species we stopped to observe.

1 – Memecylon: Mentioned as far 2000 years ago in ancient Tamil literature. Flowers in the monsoon and then yields small fruit.

2 – Ziziphufs: Small berry also. Smells good and provides good vitamin C

3 – Todalia Asiatica: Good pungent aroma and taste.

4 – Glivicedia sepium: Introduced by the British as a quick nitrogen source. Also makes good rat poison.

5 – Scyivia Myrtium: When berries turn blue you can eat.

6- Gymnema Sylvestry: Chew leaves to numb taste buds. Sweet things will no longer taste sweet for about an hour or so after consumption.

8 – Cycas cercinalas: On earth since the Jurassic period

9 – Muriah cauricalata: Jasmine relative with odor similar to the jasmine

10 – Pipul Tree: Sacred religious tree with heart shaped leaves. Buddha obtained enlightenment under the lodi tree, which is a specific pipul tree specimen. This, like the banyan, is a member of the fig family, and a keystone species, which refers to a plant that provides good habitat to support a variety of life like birds, epiphites, insects and rodents.

11 – Tamrindus: Has edible brown pods and almost all south Indian food uses tamrind juice for seasoning. Name comes from tamar, which means dates, because people thought it was an Indian version of the date tree when they named it.

12- Ironwood Tree: Not a native species. One of the few trees where autografting occurs, or the fusion of its own branches when they encounter each other.   

13 – Guiacum officianil: Also known as the tree of life, this tree is native to South America, where its various medicinal uses earned it the flattering common name. 

14 – Albizia lebbeck: Bears white flowers that symbolize victory in ancient Tamil culture. Produces long pods that dry and clatter in the wind, earning its popular name of the “Mother in Law’s Tongue” tree.

15 – Gloriosa superb: State flower of Tamil Nadu.

The fade from white to red is thought to resemble the fingers of dancing ladies.

Its tubers contain alkaloids with curative properties for arthritis.

16 – Maduka longifolia: Also known as the Sapoti fruit, this is another keystone species that humans use to make liquor, lamp, and cooking oil.

17 – Morinda Pubescence: Cousin of Noni, the Hawaiian miracle drug. Edible fruit.

18 – Wild Yam: Underground tuber is used as birth control in many ancient societies.

19 – Mahogany: Valuable hardwood.

20 – Raulina Serpatina: One of the oldest medicinal herbs. Calms the central nervous system and reduces blood pressure. Applied to snake bites and lunatics.

21 – Crescentia cujeti: Also known as the calabash or skull tree, this African import bears unique large fruit that grow directly from the main trunk so as not to weigh down the branches. Bat-pollinated ornamental. 

Academic Blog 1 - Forests, Commons and Agrarian Societies

           This blog summarizes and responds to the lecture of Dr. Ajit Menon of the Madras Institute of Developmental Studies. He focuses on the complexities of shared resources in India, and deciding how to govern and allocate them.

            He begins by explaining that all modern people live in political economies, which, for better or worse, allow politics and power to distort the laws of nature and economics. Instead of just letting people fight over control of things like forests and farmland, policies are constructed to promote use in the best possible manner. This fact is especially important to rapidly growing countries like India and China. Although agriculture’s share of Indian GDP has shrunk considerably in recent years, it still provides 60 percent of the employment in the country. Twenty percent of rural people still derive their livelihoods from forest resources. While progress is converting and depleting such agricultural resources as fields and forests, most people still depend directly on them for livelihood, making management more important than ever.

            Dr. Menon points out that, when structuring sustainable policies, social concerns must receive as much weight as strictly ecological ones. Agrarian resources play a very important role in a nation struggling to address severe poverty, because so many of the rural poor depend exclusively on these places for survival. Such families will often depend on wood gathered from nearby forests to supply fuel for cooking and heating. Complete forest preservation would forbid them such gathering activities and likely push them over the brink to starvation or undesirable, desperate means to prevent it.

            Land management in India started in the 1800’s with British attempts to legitimize resource extraction. The India Forest Act of 1878 officially decreed large swaths of wooded area as state property. Over 80 percent of this land was listed as “reserved,” which allowed for zero individual access. This was the first example of exclusion of native peoples in the interest of management. Dr. Menon didn’t report any rebellion or conflicts from this act, probably because the enforcement would have been lax and alternative areas would have been more readily available than today.

            Then, in 1947, India’s independence afforded it a choice between the somewhat contradictory philosophies of Nehru and Gandhi. The Mahatma focused on rights and self-sufficiency at the village level, while Nehru’s modern leanings drew him more to larger projects and technology. Nehru’s influence was probably stronger on modern India, and that philosophy certainly prevails in the Chinese leadership of late. Even with utilitarian arguments on their side, large infrastructure developments like dam and mine construction face valid opposition from the people they will displace or who depend otherwise on the ruined land. This is even without ecological considerations that oppose them as well.

            Can we do a better job of protecting our environment and the people most directly tied to it without changing the methodology of law creation? Dr. Menon points out the continued failure of state centralization in such policies. He also points to the Joint Forest Management program of 1988 as an example of success through alternative management. Following increased recognition of the failures of top-down resource management, the program was started to include local communities in the process. The setup incorporated the needs and advice of local tribes, and allocated them a percentage of the revenue gained from the implementation of proper forestry and logging. Basically, it recognized their inherent stake in the ownership of the resource. In 2002, this policy was expanded to more forests beyond the few degraded ones it where it was originally launched.

            Although the extension reflects well on Indian policymakers, Dr. Menon is troubled by developments in other sectors. Legislation was recently enacted mandating homogenized government hierarchies from the state to mid to local levels. This system, he argues, doesn’t provide a realistic structure for traditional tribes and villages, whose traditional means of self-governance are completely invalidated by the laws.

            He also spoke about local vs surpalocal conflicts on a more global scale. Just as the nation may need to flood a valley for power, the globe needs that valley to stay green and provide a carbon sink against global warming. Unfortunately, climate change threats seem both too massive and too distant to frequently override local development. Even on the scale of entire nations, much of the third world is pointing fingers at the US and its partners in the industrial revolution for getting us into the problem, while they respond that the third world is responsible for most upcoming growth in emissions. When asked about a global governing body like the UN to settle the bickering, Menon dismisses the solution as unlikely. The UN simply doesn’t have that strength of impartial influence, and isn’t likely to gain it anytime soon.

Instead, he thinks the demands of concerned people need to rise through the democratic process globally to make governments take relatively selfless action on the issue. It’s frankly not an encouraging answer, but, like most developmental solutions, it probably just bothers me because it’s so slow. I guess it makes sense, though, that our actions shouldn’t change without a corresponding shift in the opinions of the majority. Hooray for democracy.        

Men in Skirts

I don’t remember the first time I noticed the men in skirts. I call them skirts for lack of a better word to group the variety of traditional garments covering Indian men below the waist. I probably saw them for the first time in the form of dusty checkered lungis outside the airport in Chennai, but I would have been too overwhelmed to notice them there.

I would have seen more of the workman’s lungi, along with the more formal white or cream of a vaetti when we took our first visit to the West Tambaram market across the street from MCC. Once again, the more pressing sights of brilliant sarees and stunted beggars’ limbs blocked this omnipresent detail from my perception.    

My first vivid memory of the menswear that sometimes drags the ground like a formal gown whisking around the motion of the wearer’s footsteps probably came when Ryan showed us his tied above his knees in a bizarre combination somewhere between miniskirt and loincloth. He had purchased the 200x130 cm rectangle of burnt orange cloth on our trip to a different market that day. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so the gold-embroidered border stood out where it doubled over at his waist from folding the shorter side of fabric up to expose his lower legs.

The skirtlike family of garments is common in a variety of South Asian countries from Somolia in the horn of Africa to Indonesia above Australia. They are hard to definitively describe because they encompass a variety of names and styles. The fashion that Ryan wore is packaged as a dhoti. Suresh informed us that men in Tamil Nadu call them vaettis when the long end is just wrapped around the waist and tucked exactly like a man would wear a bath towel. The same garment worn the same way is called a mundu in Kerala and a pancha in Anhdra Pradesh, both states that border Tamil Nadu.

The double dhoti is twice as long and can be worn like a single dhoti with two layers, or passed through the legs in a pantlike configuration, but no one in Kerala or Tamil Nadu does that for daily use. The lungi is probably the most popular skirt in either state. It’s like a dhoti with the short ends joined into a tunnel you just step into and then tuck into place. Unlike the solid color dhotis, lungis come in a variety of patterns from checkered to floral. Though I don’t see them much in shops, they are ubiquitous in lower class men from construction workers to street peddlers.

Wearing a dhoti, I have quickly learned, takes much more thought than simple shorts or pants. The obvious issue is the lack of any snaps, belts, buttons, or zippers to keep the thing on your body. A simple wrap stays surprisingly secure, though, when placed at the natural waist to avoid most of the stress of a normal walking stride. Additionally, you must overlap the end enough to keep crosswinds from opening a full length slit in the very front.

Of course, excessive overlap restricts free movement, which causes you to kick and fight the garment with every abbreviated step. Finer silk models likely avoid this problem, but even jumping from the $2.50 to the $4.50 cotton models makes a noticeable difference.

            Full length dhotis and lungis are fairly light and breezy, but Indian midday heat prompts most men to double them up into a knee length version. This is definitely the most advanced style. For starters, it’s a skirt. I, and even some Indian men, have trouble managing that. Additionally, the second wrap to keep it up is much harder than the first one to keep it on, mostly due to the several layers of fabric now between it and your skin. As you raise the ends higher they become easier to secure, but this also shortens your skirt. I still have plenty of trouble with the short version, but as of this writing I have three weeks left to figure it out.     

Gopidas

Every time our group enters the Gateway Hotel in Kochi, we are met with a big smile, a polite greeting, and an enthusiastic handshake. After we pass through the metal detector, the same hand opens the door for us to enter.

            Gopidas Vikay, the tall, brown-skinned doorman, is the source of these kind gestures. He always makes us feel welcome and even valuable as guests, a skill he has surely refined through his fifteen years of hotel security experience. His thousands of days of practice could easily wear on his enthusiasm, but he brings such genuine energy to our interactions that I always feel he truly enjoys them.

            Gopidas was born in the Malappuram district of Kerala to two government employees. His mother in Education and his father worked with the irrigation department. Under their guidance, he completed his schooling through the twelfth standard, which is equivalent about to a high school diploma in America.

            When I ask him about other jobs he has held, he pauses for a second to adjust the cap that matches the full-length charcoal coat with maroon accents he wears to work every day. Tiny rivulets of sweat wander down his face to collect in the full mustache that tops his ready grin. I wonder if the perspiration stems from the heat of the mid-November afternoon or the strain of communicating in his rough English. I feel sweat collecting on my own back, for a combination of these reasons.

            “I practice martial arts for two and a half years,” he announces eventually. I ask if he did the traditional Kerala arts, but it turns out he did taekwondo. “From Korea,” he clarifies. He says he became interested for self-defense reasons, and won the silver medal for the state of Kerala in 1994. He doesn’t practice much anymore, mostly because he works so much. I naturally wonder if he ever uses his skills on the job, and he says he hasn’t been in a fight for years. When he first joined the hotel in 1998, a drunk man started harassing guests at a private dinner function, so Gopidas had to punch him a few times, but that was all. Confrontations are uncommon now. Outside of work, he likes going to the cinemas for fighting films. “They are very exciting,” he says, “and also very realistic.”

            I ask him about travel, and he says he once spent six months working hotel security in Quetar, but then returned to Kerala. He has visited many parts of India, like Goa, Bombay, and Karnataka, but he never wants to live anywhere else. “It’s God’s country,” he explains, gesturing vaguely into the air with one hand while smiling broadly. 

Besides that, he has a wife here in Kochi, who just twenty days ago gave birth to a baby girl. The excitement has spread to his coworkers, as evidenced by the nearby guard who pipes up top share the big news when I ask about his family.

Gopidas, like many Indians we meet, seems to take a friendly interest in foreigners. As I turn to leave from our interview, he asks for my name and shakes my hand. Shortly afterwards he tells our professor about the conversation we had. He walks into the hotel bar that night and waves when he sees me there. As we leave the next morning, he catches my eye to get another handshake and wish me safe travels. I get the sense that the attention I paid him was somewhat unusual. Most guests at the hotel are older North Indians or older foreigners, and seem a bit more interested in a private vacation. Our students group definitely tries to reach out to the people we meet, and it is fun to see them respond so warmly. 

The Rails

Traveling by rail stands out as one of the most exciting new experiences from India for me. Coming to India, I knew, mostly just from the Darjeeling Limited, something about the significance of trains to India both economically and culturally. I knew the British changed the landscape drastically by felling thousands of acres of trees for railcar construction in the 1800s. I also knew they provided a valuable resource and point of national pride.

            Until early November, however, I still knew nothing about the gritty details of transit by that system. At that point, three of us decided to take the train instead of the vans back from a mall in Chennai. We took a rickshaw to the station, paid our 7 rupee fare, and walked onto the platform my companions recognized from their last trip into the city. I was slightly concerned by the number of trains - probably more than five – operating on short and long-distance routes along the corridor, but decided to trust their memory. Onboard, I realized the first rule of Indian railways: the cars are at least twice as crowded as the platforms. Thankful that I had left my backpack on the van, I squeezed myself through a tangle of limbs to an empty square foot of aisle space and grabbed the overhead rail when the train moved jerkily forward less than a minute later.

            After about ten minutes, seats had been vacated and offered to all three of us. The girls sat, but I declined and remained in the crowded aisle. The car was pretty quiet, except for the clatter of the wheels through the open window and the drone of fan banks moving the humid South Indian air. The nighttime view through the windows offered little, so, as the novelty wore off, I realized just how dull the little car actually was. It was packed with Indians of all ages, but with the exception of the occasional peanut or samosa vendor muscling his way through the crowd, no one really spoke. Most of them were tuned silently in to the texts, games or Bollywood songs on their mobiles, or just staring into space.

As our ride hit the 30 minutes mark with over half the original passengers still aboard, I decided I was watching the monotony of the daily commute for most of them. The train must be their best option, as the hectic city streets made our van friends even slower than us. I suppose lengthy commutes are common in any large city, but the sight of so many people spending so much time in a disengaged stupor definitely depressed me. Is the battle of auto traffic any better? I think that’s really just another game we play to distract us from the lull between two places we actually want to be. Maybe the train actually improves that lull by allowing fuller rest or contemplation.

I was happily surprised when the compartment noticed out confusion at the Tambaram platform. We missed our stop, and most of our neighbors sprang to life with discussion of how to get us to our destination. One man got out and waited for a solid minute at the next stop, ensuring we knew how to use the reverse train properly. I sincerely doubt the same concern would be paid to a group of lost Indians on the DC Metro. In fact, a similar mix-up on the Delhi metro garnered zero sympathetic response.

That’s why I can’t draw any conclusion about India from this anecdote. I do know, though, that the men on the Tambaram train that night displayed much more communal behavior than I expected. Their interest in us and consultations with each other showed a level of investment in each other and the trains as a system. If they viewed the car as just a collection of strangers they couldn’t relate to, they wouldn’t have consulted their neighbors so easily. If they saw the train travel in the same alienated way, they probably wouldn’t care if some tourists messed it up. Instead, without knowing each other, they seemed to achieve a sort of mutual understanding of the train’s significance, and desire to avoid negative experiences.

This barely perceptible form of community doesn’t mean much, except maybe in contrast to other places. It probably wouldn’t happen further into Chennai, or maybe even outside that train car with the same people. It did, however, alert me to a sort of camaraderie-by-mass-transit-commute that I hadn’t noticed ever before. It was great to know about the definitely intimidating train system that we continued using throughout the semester.  

Mr. Singh

Like many important parts of the India, the Sikh religion appeared to me gradually. I probably saw a few turbans in TN, but I didn’t know what to think of them, so I just didn’t at all. My first memory of active curiosity comes from the Taj hotel in Kerala where we noticed some men with boat-shaped head wrappings in the dining room. Only some passing speculative conversation about their religion occurred to us then, and the Sikhs disappeared from my perception until we stepped off the plane and onto our bus in Delhi.

That’s when we first saw Mr. Singh beaming at us from behind the wheel. I remember distinct surprise to see the light blue turban topping his large stout frame and white-bearded face. I generally think of bus drivers as skillful but essentially simple people with whom my experience driving big machines gives me a bit of potential common ground. On the other hand, a turban acts for me as possibly the most alienating signal of cultural difference. For one, they’re strange, and I can’t imagine ever seriously wearing one. More importantly, their appearance adds an inevitable air of dignity to a man, and their religious implications enhance the gravity of any potential missteps or faux pas of interaction. This vague impression, coupled with zero actual experience around turbaned people, caused me to reel a bit at the sight of one grinningly ready to pilot our bus through the irreverent madhouse of Delhi traffic.

Maybe not so shockingly. we learned over the next week that Mr. Singh was a fairly normal guy. It started when he broke some fo the sacred aura of the turban by helping Drew to wrap one for himself. He showed fatherly concern when a group of guys started following our bus, and he stayed while we told them off to make sure they actually left. Finally, on our last night together in Agra, he cooked his wife’s special fried fish dish for us on a propane burner in the back of the bus, and then served us rum and cokes as we danced to Bollywood tunes in the aisles.

Coincidentally, I learned a lot more academic things about Sikhism that week also. We visited their temple in Delhi, which, even as non-Sikh foreigners, we were permitted to fully explore. We saw the massive kitchen where they serve free meals to thousands of hungry people every day. We even got to help stir the gobi and knead bread, and the served us hot chai when we were finished.

        Based on some basic readings and a conversation with a Sikh man outside the same temple, I’ve learned a bit about Sikh theology. The first part, the one that helps you identify a Sikh, is the “5K’s” which they all adhere to. They don’t cut their hair, they carry a comb, wear special undies and an iron bracelet. They also carry daggers, relating to religious persecution and their role as an army of God, which they enact by upholding the equality of all people.

This equality was emphasized by my friend outside the temple, who pointed out the exlusive aspects in the holy places and rituals of other religions, but claimed none in the practices of the Sikhs. Even I could become a Sikh, because it just means student. He talked about the logical basis of the Sikh texts, and how they described many laws of nature they were only observed by science much later. He says you are always learning but never obtain complete understanding in the temple, which keeps him coming back every day.

He was proud that Sikhs don’t force their children to follow in the religion or attempt to convert others. He admitted that Sikhism is shrinking because of this philosophy, but, according to Wikipedia, it remains the 5^th largest religion in the world. I’m surprised I had never heard of it, but I can see how it might be more easily overlooked then even smaller religions with more global significance (Jews) or local relevance (Mormons). Discovering the Sikhs definitely counts as an unexpected benefit of this India trip.

Men in Black

On our last afternoon before leaving MCC I decided to buy a dhoti to diversify my plain white collection. Standing in a storefront of the bustling West Tambaram Market, I debated between a black and a light orange garment, each with golden borders. I innocently weighted the matter as a basic fashion decision. I had never seen a black dhoti worn, but I dismissed this as a simple creative failure by formal Indian men. Many of them, after all, routinely butchered the art of flattering dress. Selecting the black, I entered the shop where I found an even better version boasting both green and red on its borders. I shelled out 125 rupees, unwittingly branding myself as one of the 50 million devotees in one of the biggest annual pilgrimages on Earth.

            As chronicled by a Nov. 18^th Hindu article, Nov 17^th, on Thursday of our first week in Kerala, marked the opening of Sabarimala, and the start of the pilgrimage. Sabarimala is a hilltop temple to Lord Ayyupan the son of Vishnu and Shiva, located in the southern state of Kerala. Legends abound about the Hindu god in Kerala and neighboring Tamil Nadu, but they basically all agree that he spent his earthly existence at Sabarimala protecting the ancient kings there from enemies and performing other benevolent holy acts.         

Today pilgrims trek there with the hope of increasing their fortunes and longevity. The travelers follow a 41 day penance period before visiting the temple. They don a garland of special beads, and abstain from eating meat, using tobacco or alcohol, or engaging in sex. Their most obvious identifier, though is the exclusive use of saffron, blue or black traditional clothing; black being the most popular. For this reason, the black dhoti earned me double takes, extended stares, and bewildered questions from the staff of our hotels, busses and restaurants in Kerala. I can only imagine a greater response if I had worn it around on the streets.             

The Hindu article told of the basic rituals beginning at 3AM and the throngs of devotees gathering to participate. As with media coverage of major US gatherings, the writing focused on the logistics of handling so many travelers converging on one destination. It stated how the state and federal police had enforced security at the temple since Wednesday morning, forcing each pilgrim through metal detector at two controlled entrances. It provided the web address for the new e-registration system, which already had 10,000 users on Wednesday afternoon. It included a list of prominent politicians who had already appeared on the first day of the event. 

The same author gave a much darker report for the Sunday edition of the Hindu, entitled “Problems galore for Sabarimala pilgrims.” He accused the monitoring board of poor monitoring, and poor planning when it demolished a number of shelters and eateries under the premise of reducing human impact. The accompanying photo showed a large, sparsely-crowded pathway built to lead people away from the shrine, but it was under utilized for lack of knowledge.

This pair articles highlights the government/religious ties that seem more significant in India than the US. I couldn’t name any religious event that causes such logistical headaches in the US, or that requires such effort from participants. I suppose this stems from the large role of ritual in Hinduism. This probably combines with the inefficiency that comes with all Indian government bodies. Debate continues about proper management for Sabarimala, and the second article mentions a movement to make a special oversight committee with statutory powers. Judicial investigations following a 1999 stampede tragedy recommended such a body but the government has taken no action on the report since its submission in 2000. Such a critical press speaks well to the state of Indian democracy, but the problems it notes are definitely discouraging, and no solutions seem forthcoming.  We know the democratic process brings change slowly, but ten years of poor management, as the article seems to indicate, is probably too long.