Oct 19
The soft crunch of gravel precedes the arriving white-wrapped forms who quietly settle onto the porch floor, forming an inward-facing circle. We wait silently in the pre-dawn darkness. The unnatural experience of gathering without greetings gives the moment a beautiful gravity; at some indiscernible cue, the chant “om, shanti, shanti, shanti” (“shanti” = peace) spreads into the calm. I cannot figure out who begins it, it is as if everyone is in tune, collectively shifting into prayer.
It’s 4:30 a.m. at Sevagram ashram, the place where Gandhi planned his political movement. In the mornings, Hannah, the German intern, comes to collect me at my room where I have been awake since 4:15 and lie in bed fully dressed, trying to expend the minimum amount of energy. We climb over the guest house gate, reluctant to wake someone to unlock it.
The collective chanting fades and everyone departs in silence as if nothing happened, another layer of surreality. I sneak another thirty minutes of sleep, then report to the kitchen. The narratives written into that communal, traditionally female space make it my frequent access point into connection and mutual understanding. Sharing work can ease the expectations attached to me – white skin and foreign citizenship often writes me into a privileged, untouchable category.
The small broom is a bound bundle of grasses; all walk barefoot inside the kitchen and dining space, so sweeping is a necessary task. I’ve picked up habits, so hold my left arm behind my back as I clean.
The ashram employs a cook: a petite, wiry woman who lives with her clever, pretty daughter in a room on the property. She grins at me and my foreign foolishness, and squats next to the stove, pulling at different pans. The “stove” is shaped from earth, the fire visible through openings in the molded clay, with a laid-in frame to support the pots. Soon, I am shooed into the next room to eat, where Hannah has stretched out the long mats; other ashramites arrive for breakfast, a rustic porridge with nuts, and sit in a row on the floor, scooping from metal plates and bowls.
Afterward, if there are no vegetables to chop, I follow Hannah to the fields. We gather rocks from the soil as the others break through the winter grasses; we are preparing the soil for planting. She and I each have a large, shallow, metal bowl, and the collected rocks clang loudly against the silence of the diggers. Instead of kneeling Western-style, we rest on our haunches so that only our feet make contact with the dirt, and pick out the offending stones until lunch.
I am grateful for Hannah, who guides me throughout my stay, clueing me in on rules. We are the rare Westerners, who don’t truly stand out until tourists (mostly Indian) come to see Gandhi’s ashram. They take photos of the famous buildings — Bapu’s residence, his wife’s, the various other historic bits of space. It’s like living in a museum; it belongs to you at night, but then you’re slicing onions and realize that a curious face is peeking through the window at you. I try to tell people about the reenactment town of Sturbridge Village back in Massachusetts, but I think only Hannah understands.
Lunch comes quickly, and afterwards, the ashram folk disperse to rest, read, reflect, and, most of all, spin, which is considered a form of meditation. Gandhi attached great import to spinning cotton into thread; all of the residents wear clothes made from natural, handmade cloth. It has a distinct, earthy texture and a familiar whitish shade. Hannah tries to teach me on the private porch of one of the ashram ladies. We’re hiding from tourists, because white girls engaging in ashram life – especially the famous spinning – tends to draw attention. I struggle to pull the cotton and turn the wheel at the same time, so we form a team, her spinning and me attempting not to break the thread. But soon I return the handful of cotton and settle against a post to enjoy the sunlight and let her actually complete something. A head peeks around the bamboo screen separating us from the public area of the complex, and soon we have an audience: twenty amused Indian tourists pack themselves into the tiny space, staring at Hannah spinning. A man pulls out a camera, but points it at me. We call into the room for back up and a smiling ashramite shoos the tourists away.
Back in the kitchen, prepping for dinner, I battle with the standing knife: it is a curved blade attached to a wooden block that rests on the floor, and you push the potato down against it. I rarely have it for long before a woman stops my slow work, giving me a regular knife – always followed by her slicing like a fiend on the traditional one.
I can’t repress my American side, my big gestures and joking. The cook waggles her head at me for being unable to speak Hindi, and I manage with our common words supplemented by performing ideas. I am accepted and enjoyed, I am told. I can’t help but wave and gasp and joke, expressing self-deprecation when they point to my kitchen skills, or communicating how bizarre the spiky “bitter gourd” looks by waving it like a weapon at a laughing (thank god) elderly woman.
The true test comes at chapatis. The ability to properly make chapatis (and chai, and probably curry, but especially chapatis) is essential to being an Indian woman. It seems simple. It is not. One must properly roll the ball of dough with deft, specific hand movements that prevent impudent wrinkles. It is not simply rolling it like cookie dough. The cook left me to prep via dough rolling, fiddling with the fire and moving things around. She turns back, takes one look at my neat pile of rolled dough, and wails, “Nooooooooo!” as if I have smushed the all the dough into a pattern on the floor.
I laugh and poke fun at her dramatic reaction, but consent to being instructed again in proper dough rolling. Luckily she is satisfied, and my work is approved, flattened, and puffed up over the fire. I am so ridiculously proud of myself.
Dal, rice, chapatis, as much as you can eat. Simple food taken in silence, but all I could want in India. We wash the metal dishes with ash at the outdoor trough-like sink as the sun sets across the fields. The resident litter of puppies arrives in a brigade of cuteness, stumbling around my feet and dashing up to their familiar Hannah.
The tourists are fading away into dusk, and the ashram folk gather in front of Gandhi’s famous sitting spot to chant and pray. I join them, a less serene and temporary member. If I remembered to coat myself in mosquito repellent, I sit quietly and listen to unknown words spoken and sung in a gentle cadence, welcoming in the night and echoing peace.
Filed under: Gandhi, India, Women
