15 Minutes of Kalmyk Fame

The last couple of days have been a bit of a whirlwind, trying to finish off my preliminary research here in Kalmykia before I head off to Siberia. Last Friday, I attended a conference at the main khurul for local scholars. The main speaker was Geshe Lakhdor, who is the head of the Tibetan Library in Dharamsala, India. Dharamsala is the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile and where the Dalai Lama makes his home. The theme of the conference was the relationship between Buddhism and science, with an emphasis on the compatibility between these two worldviews as ways of thinking. The conference was particularly interesting given the current debates going on in the United States, with science and religion positioned as mutually exclusive spheres.

Sunday was another full day. I was invited to Valeriy’s in-laws for lunch (again, the meal of the day), to celebrate the birthday of his youngest sister-in-law. She turned thirty, and is the youngest of five girls, which I thought was interesting symmetry given that that is my age and that I’m (virtually) the youngest of five boys. Birthdays and other gatherings in Kalmykia, and in Russia more generally, are marked by a series of toasts, with the well-wishers drinking their vodka do dnya, or ‘to the bottom’. Fortunately, Valeriy’s family didn’t keep too close of tabs on me (although his mother-in-law did check in from time to time...hmmm), so I got away with a sip of vodka for a couple of the toasts. After that, it was on to the local Sporting Academy, where one of Valeriy’s friends is a higher-up, and where Kalmykia was hosting the regional championships for wrestlers from southern Russia. Having never wrestled growing up in America, it was interesting to see how one of these events worked; there were two matches going on at the same time, with different weight classes (85, 100, and 120kgs) rotating through. Afterward, we went out to a Buryat restaurant, which provided me with a nice introduction to Buryat cuisine for my upcoming stop there. I'm looking forward to the encore of meat dumplings and mutton.

Yesterday evening I enjoyed, or at least laid the groundwork for, my fifteen minutes of fame in Kalmykia, as I was interviewed by a student at KSU for the local school newspaper. I talked about my project, gave my impressions of Kalmykia, and served as an academic consultant on the question of non-verbal hand gestures used by English-speakers. I made the drinky-drinky, hang-loose, and cuckoo signs for Ilyana, the student who interviewed me, as she is writing her senior thesis on these signs as used by Russian, German and English speakers. An erudite inter-cultural exchange if ever there was one.