Looking for Peace
We finally got our new car, and to celebrate having our own wheels, we took an overnight trip out of town. We drove up into the mountains to Gulmarg, a lovely valley surrounded by pine forest. The mountains here are greener and wetter than our California mountains; the area reminded us of Switzerland. 
Braving Indian traffic, driving on the left side of the highway, and negotiating winding mountain roads were challenging, but we found our way there and back again in our new vehicle, and it now wears a proud coat of dust and muddy tires.
Gulmarg is a tourist destination for Indians who can afford to escape from the summer heat further south. As a result, it was difficult to completely leave the crowds and honking traffic behind, even high in the mountains. But we managed to find a trail to hike into the woods, and later, a quiet table with a view where we drank chai.
Gulmarg has been a vacation get-away spot for many years; it became popular during the British colonial era. A landmark is the 125-year-old Anglican church, now surrounded on three sides by a golf course. In this Muslim-majority area, only a tiny congregation of Indian Christians meets there on Sundays.
The lush and dramatic mountains we traveled into are the Pir Panjal Range; if we were to continue our journey over a few more ridges, we would reach Pakistan. The India-Pakistan border is one of the most heavily militarized in the world, and our local news reports deaths of both soldiers and civilians nearly every week. Both sides are armed with nuclear weapons. Can the peace we experience in these lovely woods ever be mirrored among the peoples of this region?
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged mountains by Lisa
Wedding day blues?
Last weekend we attended our first local wedding! The bride was a relative of our landlord, so he invited us to come along with his family. He told us, “You should have this experience once, so that you know what it’s like. Then you won’t have to go to any more.” Now we understand what he meant—the wedding was a three-day affair that left us all exhausted.
In the kitchen
The weekend blurs together in my mind, but I remember many hours of sitting around and waiting, first in a room full of women and later in a big tent outdoors. The local music was amplified way too loudly. The highlight of the weekend was the feast on the last day, which is a traditional meal called “wazwan,” featuring 10 different courses of meat. The whole event had an over-the-top feel– too much food, too many people, music that was too loud and clothes that were too heavy with sequins, everyone staying up too late.
And what about the bride? She appeared from time to time, draped in sparkling finery, but looking hot and tired.
I couldn’t help noticing that neither she nor her groom seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Bride and friends
Our landlord explained that the purpose of a wedding is to reinforce the unity and honor of the family and boost their respect in the community. The bride is not expected to look happy—in fact, it would be considered shameful if she or her groom seemed to be looking forward to leaving their families behind to start a new life. Everyone makes a show of tears and reluctance when the time for the bride’s departure finally comes. How do the newlyweds really feel about each other, and about creating a new home together? Most of us have no idea, and anyway we’re just glad it’s over and we can go home and sleep.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged wedding by Lisa
A Very Special Animal
We recently celebrated the end-of-Ramadan holiday with three days of festive visits to neighbors. Although we hadn’t been fasting, we joined them for cups of chai and tasty local dishes. One of our visits took us to the neighbors whose yard backs up on our yard; we look out at their vegetable garden from our kitchen window.
As we sat drinking tea, I heard their rooster crowing outside. 
The family’s 21-year-old daughter, Abie, who speaks some English, told us the local word for rooster (“kwakor”) and crow (“bong”) and went on to describe how special the rooster is to her. She told us that before the advent of electricity and loudspeakers, Muslims who lived out of earshot of a mosque relied on the rooster to wake them up for the dawn prayer time. I watched Abie’s face as she talked about how important dawn prayers were to her. Her eyes lit up as she described her happiness when she hears the rooster’s crow and starts the day with prayer.
It’s unusual to meet people who genuinely delight in early morning prayers, and that’s as true among Muslims as it is among Christians. Seeing the glow on Abie’s face as she thought of her morning connection with God is something I’ll remember for a long time. Their “kwakor” often does his early-morning crowing from the top of the garden wall, and from now on when I hear him I’ll think of Abie starting her prayers. And I’ll turn my own thoughts toward prayer, hopefully with at least as much joy.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged rooster by Lisa