Mangoes and Cricket

Confession time: it can be difficult to think of things to write in these updates. Yes, everything is different from home. But I’m used to it now. So trying to think of interesting things to say about my life here feels a little like trying to find interesting things to say about my life at home: I’m know there are things to say, but as soon as I sit down to try to think of them, all my recent memories fly out the window!

However, the good news is that I have managed to think of some things to share with you, namely: Mangoes and Cricket.

Mangoes (Or, Proof that Heaven is Real)

It’s mango season, and I couldn’t be happier! Literally, mangoes are one of the main reasons I was excited to come here. Mango season didn’t begin until the summer season (around April and May), and so I have waited patiently this entire time for mango season to arrive, and my wait is finally over!

There’s just something about a good mango— and the way its impossible to eat one without looking like you’ve been attacked by an orange pulp monster. You just have to learn to surrender yourself to the stickiness, because eating a mango isn’t just a snack; it’s an experience.

And mangoes come in a variety of delicious forms! There’s mango kulfi (an ice-cream-esque dessert made of condensed milk), mango shakes, mango lassi (kind of like a sweet mango yoghurt) and aamras puri (fried sweet bread dipped in mango pudding). And of course, there’s always fresh mangoes for sale on the street. Although that was an adventure for a while, because my fruit guy won’t sell me any less than six mangoes at a time.

My roommate and I enjoying delicious mango shakes on our street.

Cricket (Or, Baseball’s Distant and Not-Quite-As-Cool Cousin)

There was a good deal of excitement in the office the other week, because a donor gave all our staff members free tickets to a professional cricket match! I didn’t really understand cricket, but a professional sporting match is usually good fun, and it was a nice chance for everyone to get out of the office together.

Cricket, like baseball, involves a ball, a bat, pitchers (or “bowlers”) and fielders, but that’s about where the similarities end. Instead of alternating innings like baseball, cricket games are divided into two portions: first, one team is “at bat” and scores as many points as they can, and then they switch. Because of this, the strategy is completely different than baseball. Cricket games can often last up to 24 hours. Twenty-four hours. What. Fortunately, in the professional league they often limit play to a certain number of “overs,” essentially curbing the number of times the bowler can bowl the ball in a game. This makes each game much shorter— only about three hours long.

These three hours were made much more exciting by the atmosphere in the crowd. Every time something significant happened (about every two minutes) the speakers would blare out Bollywood dance tunes, and the crowd would go nuts. Especially entertaining were the group of guys a few seats over, who got up and danced every single time, even when the event benefitted the other team.

Something I did not expect to see at the game, however, was cheerleaders. Other than in Bollywood, modesty is taken very seriously here. But there they were, cheerleaders in as little clothing as they would be at an American football game. But the thing that stood out most about these cheerleaders was not their wardrobe (or lack thereof) but the fact that they were all white. As you can imagine, this created an interesting dynamic. My friend, one of the IJM lawyers, told me that they’re mostly American and European women who have moved here to act in Bollywood, and are doing the cheerleading gig on the side. Here’s another article, if you’re interested in reading more: http://indianexpress.com/article/trending/hate-being-ogled-all-the-time-ipl-cheerleaders-tells-all-in-reddit-ama/

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I should include this in my update. Since most of you have never been here, I don’t want one of the only impressions you have of this country I've come to love to be one that is less than tasteful. Because there is so much more to this place. It is full of beauty and colour and adventure and lovely people who are passionate about changing their country and the world for the better. But, like all cultures, there is brokenness here as well. This is just one of the ways that this particular culture’s brokenness expresses itself. To be fair, if I was going to an American sporting event for the first time, I might experience similar emotions- there's as much brokenness at home as there is abroad, it just takes different forms.

I think that one of the most important things I’m learning here is that there is more brokenness in the world than we can imagine, whether it be here, in Baltimore, or even my home town, but that there is also more hope than there is brokenness. Or, at least, the hope is stronger than the brokenness. Because we have a God who has not abandoned the broken places of the earth, but has instead enabled us to be his “repairers of broken walls, restorers of streets to live in,” and promises to help us every step of the way. (Isaiah 58:12)

P.S. Baseball is waaaaay better than cricket. I fully realize that my primary motivation to say this is a sense of nostalgia and patriotic duty to my country, however, in an effort to be fair, I have come up with a legitimate reason to make this claim: since cricket is a much higher-scoring sport than baseball (teams will often score more than 200 points), the principles of economics teach us that each point is worth less. Therefore, there is not as much motivation to make charging sprints, diving saves, and epic jumps to catch a home run over the wall. So it's just not as exciting to watch.