I had already learned much about the proper etiquette for living in a Hindu culture. Of utmost importance was the concept of jutho – ritual defilement. Feet, for example, were jutho, culturally unclean. Shoes were not to be worn in the house, and especially not in the kitchen. Pointing the bottoms of your feet at someone, or worse yet stepping over someone, was an insult.
The left hand was also impure, jutho, and was not to be used to touch food or another person. Joining the fingers of either hand to form a circle, such as the American OK sign, was obscene. And on and on. It was a long list of things to remember.
Inside the kitchen, Megha Nath pointed to a 2-inch-high slab of wood which I sat on cross-legged. He had a higher seat and nine-year-old Ram Nath had a lower one. The baby sat on the floor of red mud, and the girls would all wait until the men and boys had finished eating. At the fire dishing out the rice was the mother, Aamaa. Her glass bangles jingled on her wrists as she worked.
I was sitting further from the fire than the others, which forced Aamaa to get up to serve me. So to make it easier for her, I shifted my seat close enough for her to reach me. Megha Nath said, “No, no,” and waved his hand sideways. I insisted on moving to help Aamaa, and their disapproval perplexed me. I assumed that a guest wasn’t supposed to be so accommodating.
Aamaa gave me first a steel plate heaped with rice and then two brass bowls, one filled with lentil soup and the other holding some sort of dark vegetable. This was the invariable Nepali meal called daal-bhaat. Lentils were daal and rice was bhaat. I would eat essentially the same thing twice a day, every day, for my entire stay in Nepal.
I ate as I had been taught. I mixed some daal and vegetables into the rice and scooped it up with the fingers of my right hand. The day’s vegetable was a mixture of bitter greens and pieces of potato, and it didn’t exactly excite me. I ate till I was bursting but I managed to finish only half of the rice that I had been given.
Meanwhile, the two boys were licking their plates clean. I felt ashamed; food that I had touched was jutho and could not be given to anyone else. They could only feed it to the chickens – a terrible waste.
“Mitho bhayo. Malaai pugyo – It was good. I’m full,” I said apologetically and went out to wash my hands.
For the evening meal I was given a minuscule portion and Aamaa beamed when I quickly finished it and asked for more. Each meal we repeated the same confusing affair of me shifting my seat closer while Aamaa protested.
The language lessons continued, but now we had only four hours a day, and we were three trainees in a class instead of just two.The language teachers rotated groups every day. Each afternoon we received three hours of technical training, which included seminars on teaching methods, lesson planning, and student discipline.
Everything seemed to be going fine.I was doing well in class and the family could understand my broken Nepali – I just had difficulty comprehending their replies. Then one day Gopal, one of my favorite instructors, approached me with a grim look on his face.
“Phil-ji, we need to talk,” he said in English.
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s your family. Aamaa asked me to talk to you about something.” “Really?” I didn’t know what to say; I had thought we got along well together.
“You know they are Braahman?”
It was more of a statement than a question. “What! I was told they were Kshetry.”
Braahman and Kshetry were two groups with greatly different status. Nepal was composed of a wide variety of ethnic groups and castes. The government made no official distinction between them, but each group maintained its own cultural practices and restrictions. Hindu tradition held the Braahman as the highest, purest caste while the Kshetry had a secondary ranking.
A foreigner, such as a Peace Corps Volunteer, came from outside the system and was essentially out-caste. In practice, though, most Nepalis treated a foreigner equivalent to a Kshetry.
“They have a special part of the kitchen that is clean,” explained Gopal, “where only a Braahman can go.”
Triple stupid! I had learned this before, but I hadn’t known that the family was Braahman, nor had I seen a raised part of the floor that would have shown me where it was clean and holy. At each meal I had moved into this clean section and had thus defiled it. Jutho! As well as being a terrible affront to Aamaa, I had caused her considerable work – having to scrub and re-sanctify the kitchen after each meal.
The next time we ate, I saw that the boundary of the clean area was just a beam in the roof. On the floor was no mark at all. I told Aamaa that I was very sorry, I hadn’t known that I was sitting in the wrong place, from then on I would sit where I was, it was all my fault, and it wouldn’t happen again. I was sure that she understood.
Later I talked with Gopal again – Aamaa had told him that I was very sorry about losing my place. She’d said that I was upset about having to sit in the back. She had gotten my meaning exactly backwards!
Gopal straightened the whole thing out, but from then on I was very careful about expressing my feelings in Nepali.
Excerpted with permission from The Two-Year Mountain: A Nepal Journey, Phil Deutschle, Speaking Tiger
Phil Deutschle ‒ adventurer, itinerant teacher ‒ has climbed in the Himalayas and the Andes, crossed Africa and the US by bicycle, and paddled a dug-out canoe down the Congo River.
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The left hand was also impure, jutho, and was not to be used to touch food or another person. Joining the fingers of either hand to form a circle, such as the American OK sign, was obscene. And on and on. It was a long list of things to remember.
Inside the kitchen, Megha Nath pointed to a 2-inch-high slab of wood which I sat on cross-legged. He had a higher seat and nine-year-old Ram Nath had a lower one. The baby sat on the floor of red mud, and the girls would all wait until the men and boys had finished eating. At the fire dishing out the rice was the mother, Aamaa. Her glass bangles jingled on her wrists as she worked.
I was sitting further from the fire than the others, which forced Aamaa to get up to serve me. So to make it easier for her, I shifted my seat close enough for her to reach me. Megha Nath said, “No, no,” and waved his hand sideways. I insisted on moving to help Aamaa, and their disapproval perplexed me. I assumed that a guest wasn’t supposed to be so accommodating.
Aamaa gave me first a steel plate heaped with rice and then two brass bowls, one filled with lentil soup and the other holding some sort of dark vegetable. This was the invariable Nepali meal called daal-bhaat. Lentils were daal and rice was bhaat. I would eat essentially the same thing twice a day, every day, for my entire stay in Nepal.
I ate as I had been taught. I mixed some daal and vegetables into the rice and scooped it up with the fingers of my right hand. The day’s vegetable was a mixture of bitter greens and pieces of potato, and it didn’t exactly excite me. I ate till I was bursting but I managed to finish only half of the rice that I had been given.
Meanwhile, the two boys were licking their plates clean. I felt ashamed; food that I had touched was jutho and could not be given to anyone else. They could only feed it to the chickens – a terrible waste.
“Mitho bhayo. Malaai pugyo – It was good. I’m full,” I said apologetically and went out to wash my hands.
For the evening meal I was given a minuscule portion and Aamaa beamed when I quickly finished it and asked for more. Each meal we repeated the same confusing affair of me shifting my seat closer while Aamaa protested.
The language lessons continued, but now we had only four hours a day, and we were three trainees in a class instead of just two.The language teachers rotated groups every day. Each afternoon we received three hours of technical training, which included seminars on teaching methods, lesson planning, and student discipline.
Everything seemed to be going fine.I was doing well in class and the family could understand my broken Nepali – I just had difficulty comprehending their replies. Then one day Gopal, one of my favorite instructors, approached me with a grim look on his face.
“Phil-ji, we need to talk,” he said in English.
“Sure. What is it?”
“It’s your family. Aamaa asked me to talk to you about something.” “Really?” I didn’t know what to say; I had thought we got along well together.
“You know they are Braahman?”
It was more of a statement than a question. “What! I was told they were Kshetry.”
Braahman and Kshetry were two groups with greatly different status. Nepal was composed of a wide variety of ethnic groups and castes. The government made no official distinction between them, but each group maintained its own cultural practices and restrictions. Hindu tradition held the Braahman as the highest, purest caste while the Kshetry had a secondary ranking.
A foreigner, such as a Peace Corps Volunteer, came from outside the system and was essentially out-caste. In practice, though, most Nepalis treated a foreigner equivalent to a Kshetry.
“They have a special part of the kitchen that is clean,” explained Gopal, “where only a Braahman can go.”
Triple stupid! I had learned this before, but I hadn’t known that the family was Braahman, nor had I seen a raised part of the floor that would have shown me where it was clean and holy. At each meal I had moved into this clean section and had thus defiled it. Jutho! As well as being a terrible affront to Aamaa, I had caused her considerable work – having to scrub and re-sanctify the kitchen after each meal.
The next time we ate, I saw that the boundary of the clean area was just a beam in the roof. On the floor was no mark at all. I told Aamaa that I was very sorry, I hadn’t known that I was sitting in the wrong place, from then on I would sit where I was, it was all my fault, and it wouldn’t happen again. I was sure that she understood.
Later I talked with Gopal again – Aamaa had told him that I was very sorry about losing my place. She’d said that I was upset about having to sit in the back. She had gotten my meaning exactly backwards!
Gopal straightened the whole thing out, but from then on I was very careful about expressing my feelings in Nepali.
Excerpted with permission from The Two-Year Mountain: A Nepal Journey, Phil Deutschle, Speaking Tiger
Phil Deutschle ‒ adventurer, itinerant teacher ‒ has climbed in the Himalayas and the Andes, crossed Africa and the US by bicycle, and paddled a dug-out canoe down the Congo River.