This blog post is dedicated to the students, staff and faculty who make up the Agnes Scott College Living Wage Campaign.
Dear Friends,
Thank you, as always, for supporting my mission in India with your interest in my work and in the spiritual and emotional support that always comes at a much needed moment. After 2 months of uncertainty and emotional lows, January was a welcome change. I moved into my new home on New Year’s Eve, which was one of the best days for such a transition. My new hostelmates welcomed me with open arms and we immediately became friends. The girls here have taught me so much in just a few months. My Malayalam is much improved, I can now wash my clothes by hand (on a rock!) and I can finally tie a saree all by myself. Most of my hostelmates are teachers in training, so we all get to practice teaching every day with each other!
Every day in January brought something new and exciting; I couldn’t have asked for a better site.
I could go on and on about how much I enjoy my new life here in Buchanan, but I wanted to take some time with this blog post to meditate on the concept of serving. In Kerala, serving is built into the food culture and is always something that volunteers struggle with. People of lower social stature serve people of higher stature. Most institutions hire someone whose duty it is to serve everyone tea, coffee, food, etc. If I am eating in a communal mess hall, staff comes around with food constantly asking if I want more of something. If I am visiting someone’s home, the mistress of the house will serve food to other guests, her family and me. Only after all have eaten will the server be able to eat the food that is leftover. Because I am a foreigner, and therefore a special guest wherever I go, my food is always served to me. Servers never eat with the served, and the served generally do not thank or pay much attention to the servers except to deny or affirm that they want more of a particular food item. When I was staying at Mandiram, I had the opportunity of serving, along with the wardens, some guests who came for various programs. If this particular part of Malayali culture had bothered me before, it was magnified ten times by the experience of being on the serving end.
I should mention that there are a few exceptions to this rule. One of the many things I appreciate about Buchanan is the fact that for breakfast and dinner, the boarding students take turns serving and at dinner the cook/server eats with us. However, when I eat with the Buchanan teachers at lunch the normal serving etiquette is followed, which makes me feel even worse. I hate that I have a different relationship with the kitchen staff at different meals depending on who else is eating with us.
Although I am more desensitized to this practice than when I first arrived in Kerala, it still bothers me. I think it reinforces the unjust hierarchies of caste and gender that are very much a part of Indian culture that I know I will never be totally comfortable with. I don’t feel as though I am in any way better or more valuable a human being than those who serve me, yet I am obviously seen and treated as such. For a while, I was convinced that my discomfort resulted from the cultural differences of food service, that because this practice didn’t exist in the United States, part of my dislike must stem from the newness of the experience. After thinking about it though, I realized that this is wrong because we have the same attitudes and practices in the United States, it just looks a little different. I will use the Agnes Scott College dining hall as an example. When students go into the dining hall, they grab a plate and receive food from the servers and barely interact with them except to say how much or little they want of a particular food item. I would say that most students are not familiar enough with the staff to know their names. The students’ and faculty’s behavior towards these servers also reinforces unjust hierarchies of socio-economic class and, in many cases, race. Yet, we do not see much of a problem with this system and I would say that most people would not acknowledge that this problem exists.
So why do I find these unjust hierarchies so much more apparent and “wrong” in Kerala? I have a few guesses. One is that to me, an outsider, all Keralites look more or less the same. There are variations in skin tone, some Malayalis are darker or lighter than others (the politics of skin color here is a whole different beast), but to me they all still look like Malayalis. I don’t perceive a difference in the people I’m eating with and the people I’m being served by. In the United States, most of the people who served my food were either Latino or African American. There was a visible difference in the people serving and being served that closely tied in with American ideas of acceptable social hierarchy. Another reason is that there are very few servers in a Kerala dining experience as compared to the United States, and their interaction is different. In the States, we have embraced an assembly-line style of food service (a la college dining halls) that depersonalize the food servers. To get one meal at Agnes Scott 3 or 4 different people would often serve me. In Kerala, there are usually just one or two people that serve, so I have prolonged exposure. Also, because I live in the same place (Buchanan Institution or, earlier, Bishop Moore Hostel) as the server I encounter her more often; I am forced to build some sort of relationship with her. Once I’ve gotten to know her, it’s much harder for me to accept her serving me food. The American culture of serving does not allow for such easy interaction and necessity of relationships.
It’s amazing how living in a completely different culture has really opened my eyes in a new way to my own. My role here in Kerala is of an observer and commentator, not a changer, so I cannot change the culture of food serving. However, I can work against the unjustness of the system in small ways. I build relationships with the kitchen staff and make sure they know that I do not, in any way, think less of them. I say “please” and “thank you” (dayavayi and nanni in Malayalam) I can also try to take on some food serving myself to show to everyone else that I am an equal. When I get back to the United States, I will be able to work against the unjust system. I can be an advocate for those in the food service industry. I can strike up a conversation with my food servers in dining halls, I can say “please” and “thank you.” I can help to break unjust systematic hierarchies that were previously unrecognizable to me.
