the fork is my comfort zone

I don't think I've ever had as much fun during a language class as I have while learning the Hindi alphabet.

Devanagari, as the writing system is called, has nearly 35 consonants and 11 vowels. Each of the vowels can appear either as independent characters or as symbols above, below, or adjacent to consonants. Additionally, whenever two consonants occur next to each other without a vowel in between, they form a single "conjunct character," which may or may not look anything like either of the two original characters (our book helpfully lists 100 of the "most common" conjuncts).

The consonants are ordered according to what part of the mouth is used to produce their sound: the throat, the palate, the lips, and so on. While it seems strange to begin the consonants with "K," it actually makes a lot more sense than our familiar A, B, C.

In class our tireless teacher, Binit ji, draws strange squiggles on the whiteboard and leads us in their pronunciation: "ka, kha, ga gha, anga! cha, chha, ja, jha, inya!" I wish you could actually hear this, because it's really quite funny. The tricky thing with Hindi pronunciation is that most consonants come in both aspirated and non-aspirated forms. "Kha," for example, is a completely different character from "ka," its non-aspirated cousin, and a native Hindi speaker would hear them as different sounds even if our coarse American ears would not.

How, exactly, does one aspirate? Our book says that you simply releases more breath when pronouncing an aspirated consonant. Seems simple enough, but I have been struggling with this issue, and I believe I am not alone (Sylvie's helpful insight during one class: "Just saying it louder doesn't make it aspirated").

Learning the alphabet, learning how to speak properly -- it's like being five years old all over again. All of the things I was sure I had down pat, I have had to relearn since arriving in India.

Recently we spent four days in Murahua, Bantu's village, living with families there and learning about life in rural India. During group check-in one afternoon, Christina remarked that if some major world disaster were to occur, we Americans, so utterly dependent on industry and fossil fuels and international supply lines, would likely starve, while residents of the self-sufficient villages of rural India would be totally fine. Similarly, I would add that in the highly improbable event of a worldwide silverware shortage -- spoons and forks disappearing overnight from kitchen drawers everywhere -- most Indians would hardly notice, while Americans would sit in awkward silence at the dinner table, staring at their food, wondering what to do next.

Indians traditionally eat only with their hands -- specifically, only the right hand, as the left hand is considered unclean. Since arriving in India, though, it has seldom been necessary for me to use my hands to eat. At the program house there is always silverware, and at my homestay in Varanasi, my host mother always brought me a fork or spoon with my plate.

In Murahua I also received a spoon with my food. But silverware made me feel so... Western, and one morning I decided I would do what everyone else did and use my hands. I dumped my bowl of dal onto my plate of rice, and watched my host mother, Gulabi Devi, to figure out what to do next.

Often, a small piece of chapati (a kind of flatbread, like a tortilla) is used like a fork to scoop up food and bring it from plate to mouth. But this meal was served without chapati, and I looked on as Gulabi (a priestess in the village's temple) mixed the lentils and rice together with her hand, and then brought a piece of the mixture to her mouth.

This is how babies eat in America, before they are taught that playing with your food is wrong. I felt disgusting. My hands were slimy. Every lump of this yellowish mushy mixture that I brought to my mouth made me gag. And yet there is definitely an art to eating with your hands, one that is lost after so many years of fork use. Gulabi was graceful, using only the tips of her fingers; I was a mess, requiring the entirety of my right hand (and an occasional prod from the forbidden left) to get the food straight and into my mouth.

As I made my way to the water tap -- followed, as always, by one of my host siblings (it was strange at the time, but doesn't it make sense that someone who doesn't know how to eat or speak or use the bathroom might also get lost on their way to wash their hands?) -- I reflected on this authentic experience and imagined myself not using a single fork or spoon for the rest of the trip. Then I reflected further and decided it would be enough to resolve to use spoons and forks less often.