Garam Tea Chat

By Achamma Chandersekaran 

I had met Tina at my nephew’s house while visiting my native village of Arthunkal in Kerala. She used to come there everyday to prepare meals for the family. She was a pleasant woman who could make delicious dishes.    

One day I met her daughter, a beautiful young girl studying in the fifth grade. She was a good student and did well in all subjects, except English, her mother said. I told her that I’d help her with English if she came to the house. She could come only a couple of times. During school days, especially during the Makaram Festival at the local church, it was not easy to fit this into her schedule. But I had established a good relationship with the mother and daughter. 

Two years ago Tina came to me a couple of days before I had to leave and asked for a loan of Rs.10,000 to fix up her house, promising to return it the next year. I had spent all the money I had taken and asked her why she didn’t make the request earlier. We agreed on “may be next year.”  But I was not comfortable with that decision. Who knows who would be there a year later?  Who knows if I would go at all the next year?  So I deposited a dollar check in my account at the local branch of the State Bank and arranged for Tina to get the 10,000 rupees. 

After I retired from the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2000, I went to India for two months every year, supposedly to get away from the winter here in the East Coast. But invariably winter would wait for me to get back in the middle of February and give me a taste of the chill. I went last year also. Since my nephew passed away during the year, one of the first things I did was to go and visit his wife. Tina was still there and said that I should have called to say that I would be visiting. She had to return the money to keep her word. I told her that she could give it to me any day before I went back. Within a few days, when I called my niece about my planned visit, she told me that Tina had brought the money and left it with her so that I could get it whenever I went there. I appreciated Tina’s determination to keep her word. 

When a grandnephew who had borrowed money from me was making excuses for not returning it, though he had been in a high paying job for a couple of years, I sent him an e-mail and said:             

“Last year, the woman who has been making meals at Kenny’s house had borrowed 10,000 rupees from me saying she would return it this year. True to her word, when she learned that I was at Arthunkal she brought the money and paid me back. I realized that one doesn’t have to be rich or educated or from a “good family” to have credibility. Sometimes one has to learn from the uneducated poor.” 

The young man was obviously furious and I got an immediate response that included the following: “ur microfinancing business and cheap tricks wil run well in akl, among illiterate fishermen … thatz y u hav built an inflated brand for yourself in that tiny insignificant village… but only among those innocent folks… Remember, bubbles dont last long!” 

He can have his opinion. I was not helping people with any ulterior motive and my email was only a factual statement. What he borrowed is yet to be paid back. 

When summer vacation started this year I called Tina to find out how her daughter was doing in school. Last year she had told me that the girl did well in all subjects, even English. But she still had difficulty with Math. So I asked Tina to arrange for someone to tutor her during the summer so that when she would get to the ninth grade in June she wouldn’t feel lost. After many attempts I was able to talk to her and get her to agree to do that.  

During the conversation she told me that she had to borrow the money she returned to me at almost 20% interest to return it on time. I was flabbergasted, didn’t know what to tell her. One reason why I loaned the money was to keep her away from the loan-sharks. When I asked her why she didn’t tell me about all this she said, “I had promised to return it in a year and that was the only way I could keep my word.”  According to her, most of the fishermen folks in the village lived hand-to-mouth. When they needed extra money for something urgent like fixing the roof before the monsoon season, the loan-sharks would be ready with the money for an exorbitant rate of interest. She had also pawned her gold chain because the house repair needed Rs. 40,000. From what she told me I don’t think she would ever be able to get her jewelry back.  

Since that conversation, I had been wondering how I could help her. After thinking of different ways, I came up with one idea: based on a CD I have at the State Bank, I can arrange for her to get a loan at about 6.5% interest. As she is meticulous about keeping her word, hopefully she will pay back the loan in three years (a bank requirement.) 

It is no fun being poor. This is one reason why I want her daughter to study well and get a job so that this hand-to-mouth existence will end with this generation.  Before going to bed, I talked to the bank manager and sent an e-mail to the bank asking them to loan Tina Rs. 20,000 (she asked for 20k instead of 10 to consolidate her debts), keeping my CD as security. The CD is going to be there anyway, I thought, there is no harm in someone in need benefiting from it – as long as they keep their side of the deal of paying back on time. 

Achamma Chandersekaran is the translator-author of Daughters of Kerala, a collection of short stories by award-winning Malayalam authors. She has presented a copy of her book to the Pope. You can visit her at www.achammachander.com

By Ritu Primlani 

In this day and age, we humans live fragmented lives in cities of fragmented logic. My favorite story is when my friend Linda Van Houten of Juneau, Alaska happened to be at the airport, and watched a man disembark his plane along with a little boy. Being the good Alaskan she is, she said, “Welcome to Alaska!  What brings you to this great land?”   

“I have heard the bears are dying out in Alaska,” he said. “So I have brought my son here,” he continued, “to shoot one before they are all gone.” 

Or the time I sat with an Indian couple who were doctors in New Jersey. The wife told me how she was working with Indians with HIV in New York and New Jersey. In one instance, she told a woman that her husband had HIV, and that she must not have unprotected sex with him.

She replied, “He is my husband, if he wants me to have kids, I’ll bear them for him.”  The doctor, frantic now, said, “Don’t you understand? If you have unprotected sex with him, not only will he die, you will die, and your children will probably die too.” The woman said, “No, he’s my husband, I’ll do what he says.”  I wiped a tear from my eye. I thought how passionate this woman is about her work!  And then the good doctor took me upstairs to show me her jewellery, and showed me a bear claw. I was taken aback. I said, “Er… what is that?”  Her reply was, “Oh, that’s a bear claw.” I said, “But don’t you know how they got it? It wasn’t like they ran after the bear and clipped its nails!!”  She said, “Yes, but what can you do?”

From that day forth, all my mother in Alaska has to say to piss me off, is, “Yes, but what can you do?”  And I go scarlet … each time.We live fragmented lives in cities of fragmented logic in a further fragmented world. We are not told that the detergent we use has neurotoxins in it, that the electricity we use will likely cause Polar Bears to starve. We don’t know that everything is interconnected, and we insist on acting like nothing matters, that we can do what we like with no consequences.

And isn’t it interesting, Indians who have known the sanctity of life, who were known for their minimal consumption in the ancient medical and lifestyle traditions of Ayurveda, Yoga, Homeopathy, and Jains who are so kind they do not even eat garlic— lest they kill the plant that provides them food— today have been hit by sophisticated consumption that leaves us entirely ignorant and unconcerned with the true impact of that which we consume. Taking a cloth bag to do grocery as our parents did is too much, and changing light bulbs to energy efficient ones is crowded out with so many other things that are more important. More important than the lives of oceanic creatures who get to eat, drink, and choke on our plastic bags; in some areas of oceans broken down plastic is more prolific than zooplankton. It’s not in our backyard, when we dump plastic bags into the ocean, but it is the air they breathe; it is their home. We don’t know that when polar bears die out, we are next in line. Can you imagine!  One species on earth of the millions habiting it is responsible for killing off most others? What hubris! What a claim to fame! We can’t live without our animal and plant brothers and sisters.

We don’t care for them today because we don’t know how they help us live. And even if they didn’t, don’t they have a right to a healthy and long life?When did we change from being responsible adults to five year olds who don’t care what they consume, what they break, and throw things away like they are disposable? Each generation, it seems, asks us to go faster, do faster, talk faster, eat faster. More labor saving devices, less time. It seems we live in a bubble of denial, where doing right by the survival of mankind is an option, not integral to our daily lives. How far would our lives go when we keep damaging all life around us? Having no time to care is tantamount to not having time to make sure our children survive. Not caring is not caring whether our grandparents and our children live or die.I am not asking you to care for the environment; that would be a mistake. I am asking you to look at your life and ensure the survival of your own children, your nieces and nephews. We aren’t doing anyone any favors. We are not noble if we love and care for our trees. We are merely thanking them for giving us life (for where is oxygen maintained?). We are not heroes if we don’t buy plastic. We are just making sure we don’t poison our waters to the point where we can’t drink them. We are not vigilantes if we refuse toxic chemicals. We are merely making sure we don’t drink those chemicals later on.

Look at Ganga, the most sacred of rivers in the world. A study actually showed that the oxygen capacity of Ganga was higher than other rivers, indicating that it had the ability to purify greater than other rivers. Can any city in India now recognize that Ganga? Have we not turned her into an open sewer where we wash our economic and civil sins? Today Ganga is dying from anthropocentric contributions to her— dyes, pesticides, biological waste— all dumped into her because we don’t live in it.

Don’t we see that Ganga is our artery that brings life-giving blood to our bodies that is part of that greater body, without which we cannot survive? Don’t we see that trees are our lungs? How long can we mutilate our host, how long can we keep demanding from our mother earth till she has nothing to give? And give she will, as mothers do, with her last breath. What kind of children are we, to demand such horrible things of our mother that kills her to give us? What have we done to help her lately? To show her that we love her? When have we said, mother, here, take this, rather than whining “I want, I want, I want” constantly? When have we said, no, I won’t ask for this because this will inject poison into you, mother, and I don’t want you to get sick, I want you to be strong and healthy?

When did we get so myopic that our sanctity is cloistered in our temples, churches, mosques, and gurudwaaras? Isn’t God everywhere? Let us stretch our sanctity into our daily lives. Let us liberate our prayer from the walls of our temples into our homes and businesses. Would our God accept us as a devotee if we kick and beat her other creations? The ground I walk on is sacred. Right now, right here. This is my religion, this is my God, this is my mother. And till the day we walk that walk, and talk that talk, let us not delude ourselves with the notion that we are worshipping our Gods with sweet-smelling incense; we are worshipping our Gods with broken light bulbs. 

Ritu Primlani is the founder and Executive Director of Thimmakka’s Resources for Environmental Education, a California based environmental non-profit. Ms. Primlani is among the most prominent global social entrepreneurs. She has designed and implemented a program of comprehensive environmental outreach to restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, called Thimmakka Certified Green Restaurants (TCGR). She specializes in critiquing and assisting nation-wide infrastructures that promote environmentalism and social equity. She is the recipient of the national Environmental Leadership Fellowship 2003, United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Heroes award in 2003, the state of California’s highest and most prestigious honor – the California Governor’s Award 2003, the national Volvo Hometown Hero award 2004, the San Francisco Bay Area Community Hero award 2004, the Ashoka Innovators for the Public Social Entrepreneurs Fellowship 2004-07, and has been named among the top 50 most powerful environmental leaders in the United States by Organic Style magazine, and among the top 40 business leaders by the East Bay Business Times, 2005, and the 35 Under 35 award for exceptional businesswomen around the world, World Business Report, 2007.

Ms. Primlani can be reached at thimmakka@thimmakka.org

Website:  www.thimmakka.org