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MIMI NICHTER AND MARK NICHTER 3 A Tale of Simeon: Reflections on Raising a Child While Conducting Fieldwork in Rural South India Conception During our first two years as co-researchers in rural South India , hardly a day went by without someone asking us how many children we had. To our reply, "None," the next question would invariably be, "How many years have you been married?" Our reply of three years would be followed by silence and a pitying look at Mimi. In time we came to understand the meaning of the look and the silence: It was possible that Mimi was a barren woman. Three years was pushing the reasonable limit for conception . Mark's virility was not questioned; childlessness is at65 66 Mimi Nichter and Mark Nichter tributed to women. Mimi's explanation that she was practicing birth control was looked at as a paltry excuse. What woman, in her right mind, would get married and not have at least one child? What mother-in-law would allow such a thing? Occasionally , women would whisper bunja to each other behind Mimi's back. Bunja is a term that likens a woman to a seed that has been thrown to the field but has not sprouted. Ifbunja, a woman is not invited to auspicious occasions such as weddings because she is considered unlucky. Not having children was particularly problematic because of the nature of the research we were carrying out-focusing on lay health ideology and medical culture. Ironically, it was often easier for Mark, as an apprentice of ayurveda, the classical Indian system of medicine, than for Mimi to ask questions relating to children, children's illnesses, and delivery. Such questions were met with a somewhat skeptical and joking look by many informants , who said that Mimi needed to have the experience herself in order to understand their responses. What made matters worse was that in an Indian village, a woman's fertility and menstrual pattern is something others are very much aware of because of restrictions that separate women during menstruation. During the second year of our research, we were living in a joint family while studying ayurvedic medicine. At that time, Mimi did not menstruate, which was considered serious both within folk health ideology and the ayurvedic medical system. After some months of concealing this condition, it was recognized by one of our patron ayurvedic practitioners, vaidya, who became insulted that we would spend so much time studying ayurveda and yet would not undertake appropriate treatment. He was ready to break off relations at a critical point five months before we were to leave the field. Understanding the cultural importance of the illness, Mimi decided to seek treatment. Although we had experimented with ayurvedic medicines for many A Tale of Simeon 67 of our health problems, this presented somewhat of a dilemma: Not only did Mimi not consider it an illness to have stopped menstruating but, given our living conditions, she considered it somewhat of a blessing. After two months of treatment, Mimi's menstrual cycle was normalized, and after three months of treatment , the vaidya's wife half jokingly asked Mimi if she had the desire for sour foods, a sign of pregnancy. Preparations for leaving the field after two years of research were particularly hectic, since it was the festival season for village gods and a time of local possession-cult activities. During the many possession rituals we attended, we were invariably given blessings by the deities to return to India with a son in the near future. As fate would have it, the month we returned to Scotland, Mimi had the desire for sour. The news of her unplanned (by us) pregnancy was met in India with claims of credit from both ayurvedic vaidya and devotees of the deities who had extended their blessings to us. These claims extended to our child a sense of belonging when we returned to the field twenty-three months later-a sense that remains to this day. Returning to the Field When Simeon was almost two, we were afforded a second opportunity to conduct anthropological research in South India. Our research focus continued to be folk health ideology and the health behavior of the rural poor, but this time particular emphasis was placed on illness relating to malnutrition among children as a group at risk. Fieldwork was to be carried out in two regions, one in which we had already worked, the other a region with which...

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