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Women Writing Culture

University of California Press

No matter how often Charity looked up at the world map above the department secretary's desk, it still struck her as strange. Tilting inward, continents elongated as El Greco figures, the map simply did not have the right shape. The Americas claimed the center, knocking Europe and Africa off to the right. At each side were partial Indias: one with Punjab severed, the other missing several northeastern states. Scattered across all these realigned continents were pins with colored knobs, each pin locating a culture described in a senior thesis written recently by an anthropology major. Charity had been responsible for guiding a few of these projects.

She was looking at the map now because there was nothing else to do as Wendy, the department secretary, sorted through the mail. If Wendy was openly watched, she slowed down: sighing, examining stamps, turning over each piece of mail before she relinquished it to one of the cubbyholes she faced.

Just standing in the department office, Charity knew, could delay Wendy too. But Charity had arrived at the same moment as the plump man from the college post office who each afternoon bore in the plastic tray of mail. She had glimpsed the red and blue chevrons of an airmail envelope and couldn't draw herself away. Stretching out the moments, she stamped her boots, hung up her down coat, ran a hand through her capflattened hair. Nothing had reached her box yet. With the key to her office cold between thumb and forefinger, she inspected the map. She wondered whether the thesis about religious practices among Trinidadian Hindus who'd emigrated to Britain would be represented by one pin or three.

At a university with a graduate school, such pins in primary colors marked students off in faraway places. In this small liberal arts college, though, a pin puncturing paper meant nothing more than an attachment to certain shelves of books in the library. And the Whitney College library was so close that Charity could see the snowdrifts gathering on the steps and at the base of the twin pillars donated by the class of 1836. The map and the library in the same frame of vision mixed a claustrophobia so mean that Charity turned for a better look at Wendy's stack. Manila inter-office envelopes lined with names of professors and administrators were making their weary rounds within the campus. But there were also publishers' catalogues, letters machine-stamped from other institutional addresses in the United States, and what promised to be a few airmail envelopes or aerograms: paper that had traveled far.

It was Wendy of anthropology?not Jane of economics, Betty of English, or Christine of religion?who handled Third World grained envelopes of nonstandard sizes carrying bright boxed scenes related to development, tourism, or political figures with unpronounceable names. Recently when Wendy had been honored for twenty-five years of service to the college, she had brought along a stamp collection culled from countless afternoons of sorting mail. The Whitney College newspaper had carried a photograph of her?a plump, bespectacled woman given to wearing bows and ribbons?posing with a page of rare stamps from New Guinea, Togo, and Bhutan.

"One for you," Wendy finally turned to say.

"Ah," said Charity. Had her loitering been that obvious?

"It's that ant-track writing again," Wendy waved an envelope in Charity's direction. "Every mailman between here and India must have needed a magnifying glass."

Charity reached out a hand with the same sensation as having just downed an espresso. She let herself into her office and locked the door. She lit up a cigarette and pushed aside the latest pile of blue books on her desk. Ever since smoking behind the bathrooms at boarding school she did this furtively, a stolen pleasure now reinforced by campus laws against smoking in offices. She ran her fingers over the tiny writing on the envelope and the hard ridges of the reglued stamps. Wendy would expect these stamps.

Then, with a sandalwood cutter that still gave off a fragrance, she slit the envelope and unfolded the bundle inside. There they were, the ant tracks released: scurrying across the page, pressing deep into the paper to leave impressions on the other side, spilling into margins in after-the-fact elaborations. He always covered both sides of every page, and the pages went on: three, five, sometimes even ten.

. . . Thanks for the xerox of the relevant pages from the 1918 Trigarta District Gazetteer. Ironic, isn't it, that these key volumes are in libraries in Berkeley, Chicago, and wherever else, but you can't get your hands on them anywhere in Trigarta? That information really helps me out.

Well, there went the electricity. Now I'm writing by lantern and if these pages have a stench of kerosene you'll know why. It's one of those clear nights, starlight clotting the sky and trickling down over the mountains in their winter white. I spent the day recording midwinter children's games, not because it's my research topic but maybe because I have some sort of unexamined nostalgia for the days when anthropologists were responsible for documenting everything. (Incidentally, do you have any idea whether Bhargava included any of these games in that book you mention in the dissertation? No, I ain't angling for more xeroxes, I'm just curious about whether anyone has written about the games, the symbolism of the walnuts used, etc., etc.).

Have been trying to act on your request for more slides of the tulsi plant?sorry you hadn't alerted me at the time when the plant was to be married in November. (This is my first experience with plants that have weddings.) At the moment, the plants are looking fairly withered, and the women's paintings on the plant's platform are fading fast. Following your tip about Prakash Singh's courtyard I went over there with my camera. Was received warmly and sat down to drink tea in one of the kitchens off the courtyard, though all the relatives from across the way crowded in for entertainment. As usual, every interaction with me as a foreigner was framed by comedy. Some of the kids were giggling so that they were thwacked by their mothers (also smothering smiles into their gauze scarves) and then there were loud bawls. Just mention America and the next question is whether I know you, though once in a while someone will bring up a relative who works in New Jersey or even Kuwait and ask if I know them. I told this set of inquisitors that I'd never met you, which disappointed the women mightily. When I added that you sometimes wrote to help me out with my research, I was quizzed on your health . Suksanth? Any children? Mundu? None that I know of, I said. I am deputed to send you greetings, to tell you to come soon, and to remind you that Raju's sister would like a watch with a little face just like the one you wear.

Anyhow, to get back to the tulsi plant. As usual, this courtyard also had the stick-figure divine bride and groom borne in the palanquins escorted by players from the band, and surrounded by trunks and brass pots of dowry. But the dowry also unmistakably included a sofa set, a bicycle, and a television painted in that same spare folk style! I guess times they are a-changing for the Gods too. I'll have the slides developed next time I get down to Delhi. Maybe I'll be able to locate some peripatetic scholar who could mail them from the U.S.

Late in the day I was ushered...