The Fog Comes on Little Cat Feet

(I wrote this several weeks ago but never got it up. I'm posting it now because winter is definitely on the minds of folks in the Northeast. Spring has now come to Banaras, a temperate interval before the furnace of summer.)

It’s cold in Uttar Pradesh, the state I’m in. Cold means 2 to 4 degrees Celsius which is 39 F or so. Hardly enough to yawn at in the States, here it closes the schools. That’s because no buildings have central heating, and space heaters are a luxury. With their concrete walls and stone floors, the schools can’t keep children warm so they’ve closed during this cold snap. There’s also thick white fog, a palpable, ghostly substance that makes everything outdoors mysterious and isolated from all intelligible context, seasonal but thicker and more tenacious than usual, I’m told. Caused by the southern-sweeping Arctic jetstream, it sits stubbornly on the ground day after day, fanning out in a way that keeps rail passegers stoically huddling with their baggage in unheated waiting rooms while it plays havoc with transportation in this part of India (I get no morning paper for days at a time), and creates connectivity chaos for phone and internet users.

Cold brings out the shawls and head wraps. Instead of coats many Banarasis wear woolen shawls, a light, portable toasty shield against the chill. The best are from Kashmir, especially prized for their silky nap and delicate tracings of floral embroidery, not only beautiful but astonishingly warm for their weight as I can personally attest. Also in demand are soft, thick Tibetan-made unbleached wool scarves from the Himalayas. Trash fires punctuate the thick, white fog that settles on the road like vaporous snowdrifts that make it difficult to see in front of traveling vehicles, indeed, to see traveling vehicles, and making the line drying of laundry a two, even three-day affair. Men squat around them in their unbleached tan or ivory shawls drinking tea, conversing, reading the newspaper, from early in the morning till about noon when the sun warms things up for a couple of hours.

There is something that fixes in memory the drape of shawls over the heads and shoulders and upper body of men, long kurtas beneath a silhouette like snow on mountains and seemingly as ancient. It’s the look of a way of life, a solution that has long served the needs and history of a culture. Women are draped in every season. Wrapped now in wool they scurry along before dawn to the river to perform morning bathing rituals. Standing in Ganga-ji they show little sign of the cold, though close up you see them shivering when they emerge to put on fresh saris, sweaters, and shawls. Of course there are Western style warm jackets but mostly for men. Shopping in a small local department store whose clientele is not-fancy middle class, I could hardly find anything warmer than corduroy for women.

Tradition, of course, could not anticipate the windstream of motorcycle-driving, though plenty of men driving wear only shawls. As the possessor of a largeish jacket bought precisely to defend me against the cold and wind of driving, I still wear a shawl over it to fit in better since women just don’t wear motorcycle jackets. Mostly they mostly ride side saddle behind the men, whose shoulders form at least a little barrier. (Draped in a shawl, salwar suit, warm socks over my sandaled feet and a bonnet sort of a little hat that is sold here, you can’t tell I’m a Westerner til you see my face, which can be useful for moving unmarked through crowds.)

Lacking heat in my flat, I’ve learned to cover up. My feet are always cold even with rugs bought to put a barrier between me and the chilly stone floor. Inside I wear long underwear, Indian salwar pants, the long housedress that is considered appropriate wear for women at home, a sweater or two, a blanket shawl tucked under one arm and thrown over the opposite shoulder to free a hand for doing things, and occasionally a stocking cap. My attire resembles that of Banarasi women generally, though more layers means more money. Bucket baths in the concrete unheated shower room are another matter, sort of thrilling in their extreme-adventure way. At night I tuck a hot water bottle under the covers, a lovely hand made cotton batting quilt of Indian pattern stuffed with black cotton, which is considered especially warm, that I bought for about 10 dollars from one of the large wooden wagons on which they are stacked for sale on the main street. Quilts are both for bedding and socializing since lots of folks sit on them instead of using couches.

In workplaces the space heaters tend to be trained on the highest status person around (that has sometimes been me) rather than the largest number of those present, one of the less than subtle ways that status is continually marked.

A definite cultural divide surrounds the use of curtains. For Westerners curtains are devices that permit us to go less than decently clothed inside our own houses by shielding any outside view. As far as I can tell, Banarasis with their extended families never go less than decently clothed inside. The point of curtains, therefore, is to hang on doors to keep out the cold in winter; in summer, the bugs (screens are a rarity), heat and dust. Hung inside at floor length they separate functions in the house, especially guest and family areas. A friend of mine rents rooms from an Indian family whose matriarch could not understand why she wanted window curtains, just as my friend could not fathom the aesthetic or functional merit of door curtains. “But WHY??” they expostulated in mutual incomprehension.