Check-in

Hey All!

So everything is going well, despite the fact that I haven't written in a million years. Actually, I lied. One thing is not going well. My computer crashed about two weeks ago and I lost all my data, etc. Luckily I'm able to get the hard drive replaced under warranty, but it still sucks. So that's why I haven't written in awhile.

Kalimpong was lots of fun! It was really beautiful. I wish I could upload photos from my trip, but alas, they are buried with my old hard drive.

Everything with the NGO is finally jiving and going really well, but I fear it's too little too late. I'm not sure I'll be able to get the program off the ground before I leave. And if I don't, I'm not sure the others will have the will to ensure that it actually starts. So that's stressful. But I really am enjoying doing the work.

School and my social life are equally hectic, and basically I'm just struggling to balance all three. But I'm having a really good time!

I'm gearing up for my trip around South India at the end of my program. Really excited!

~m

Debates, Gay Rights, and Stopping Domestic Violence

This past week was packed full of interesting experiences.

On Monday, American Independence Day, we didn't have class. I went with Tiljala SHED to a program about stopping domestic violence. The program was put on by the Jadavpur University Women's Studies Department, in the school that T-SHED runs in a slum in Topsia. Many of the women from the slum came to hear the presentation. At the beginning, I could understand everything that was being said, because the presentation was done in such a way as to be very accessible for the women. This means no big, academic words, etc, which means I could understand it. However, as they asked for lots of audience participation, the conversation soon switched to Hindi/Urdu, which I cannot understand. Most of the slum dwellers are Urdu speakers from Bihar or other states.

The presentation started out by asking what are instances of domestic violence and why they happen. Presumably, it went on to explain ways women can confront it and ways to stay safe, but I didn't understand alot of what they were saying. At the end, they were talking about how women can go to the police if their husbands hit them, and how their husbands can be fined or put in jail.

I think this is good, but as I was listening to it, I was thinking that no woman would want to have her husband fined or put in jail, because she and her children depend on his income. This got me to thinking about domestic violence in the US, to which I've previously not given much thought. I wonder if such income constraints prevent women in the US from acting out. Surely it does, but it's not something I've ever really thought about before. Nonetheless, it's good that women here at least have the legal support in some way, even if it's not yet practical for them to use.

That particular slum is one of the main drug trafficking hubs of Kolkata. One of the T-SHED workers asked me if I wanted to see the drug dens and I said sure, thinking that we'd just walk slyly by. Nope. Instead we went with one of the women who works alot in that community and knows all the people there. She took us inside the dens, and we got live demonstrations of how to smoke brown sugar, a form of heroine. Definitely an experience I never thought I would have. We spoke to some of the drug users about why they use it, and it was clear that they were completely addicted. One man talked about how his four children and his wife didn't respect him anymore, but how he needed to smoke it to be able to do his work. At first I thought that it was because his work was painful or something, but then I realized that it's not because of the nature of his work, but because of the nature of the withdrawals if he stops using it. Really sad. One hit costs 50 rupees, and it takes two hits to get high. 100 rupees a day is a huge amount for someone who probably makes less than 1000 rupees a week. I'm not really sure how much most of the slum dwellers make, but it can't be much. For your information, 1oo rupees is about $2.20 or so.

I'm going to skip to the weekend in the interest of space and time. On Saturday I went to a debate sponsored by the American Center of Kolkata about whether capitalism is a prerequisite for democracy. I thought that it was going to be community leaders in the debate, but it was actually teams of students from some of Kolkata's top colleges. It was interesting, and some of the speeches were pretty good, while some weren't. Even though the event wasn't what I had had in mind, I was glad I went.

Yesterday I went with two other AIIS students to a gay rights rally. They had booths for different advocacy groups in the city, who work on issues from legalization, to safe sex, to transgendered issues. The main reason we went was to see a documentary that they were showing about the Hijra community in Pakistan. They movie screenings were running about 3 hours behind schedule, so we waited for a long time to be able to see it. Then, when they showed it, it turned out to be only 10 minutes long and not very informative. Woops. Nonetheless, it was very interesting to see the rally as a whole, because India is still very conservative. Most of the attendees were upper-middle class gay men, which I am told is often the core group (and main funders) for the movement in India. Some women told me that lesbians, transsexuals, lower class people, minorities, etc are often pushed to the sidelines, and that the parades, rallies, etc are very political within the community. Kinda sounds like what I know of the gay rights movement in the US. Anyways, it was exciting to see this side of human rights work in India, after spending so much time working on economic empowerment.

Though I had other fun and interesting experiences throughout the week, those are definitely the list-toppers.

Tonight I'm going with Ben, Jeff and Rebecca to Kalimpong, in the Himalayan foothills for our midterm break!

~m

Off the Beaten Path in Kolkata, and Shantiniketan

Week three is over, but nothing has slowed down. I'm very busy this summer, between classes, working with the NGO, and trying to see all my friends.

Classes are going well, but I don't feel like I'm improving noticeably. I guess that's what happens when you get up into higher levels, the progress is more gradual. But I am really enjoying the classes, as ever.

Working with Tiljala SHED continues to provide me with new experiences and new views of Kolkata. I went earlier in the week to Topsia, a rather run-down part of the city. First I went to visit one of the schools, which is in a slum along a canal. The houses in the slum were some of the worst conditions I've seen in Kolkata, at least up close. It makes the slums I worked in Khardah seem clean and cozy by comparison. There were flies everywhere. the houses themselves were made mostly of plastic and scraps of different materials, rather than the that and concrete that abounds in Park Circus, for instance. Anyways, the school itself was very sweet. There was a class going on when I got there. The children were drawing pictures. They had all come after their regular public government school.

One second grade boy had stopped attending the public school the month before. His mom apparently doesn't see the point in sending her children to school. He told me his brother went until 4th grade, so I told him he should go until at least then also. He was really embarrassed to talk to me about it, but he said he would go the next day. I wonder if he did.

After visiting the school, we stopped by the go-down that TSHED owns. Go downs are these enormous shacks (usually built on a slope down to a canal, which I assume is how they got their names, though I'm not sure) that hold trash. People sit among bags and bags of trash, which they have actually bought from private and public places like malls and office buildings (yes, they buy the trash.) The people sit there and sort the trash first into plastic, paper and one other category (I forget, woops). And then they sort again. And again. And again. I don't know how many categories they sort into, but once they've done that, they sell the sorted trash to other people/companies, who specialize in recycling that specific kind of trash. When one first comes to India, it seems bad that there aren't recycling facilities and that bottles and things instead just get thrown away (if they aren't kept for storing water in private homes, which is very common). But unlike in the US, in the trash does not mean in the landfill. The whole process is actually really impressive and admirable.

...Until you see how it works on the ground. The people sorting the trash do not have any kind of protective gear whatsoever, not even gloves. TSHED tried to introduce gloves before, the workers didn't want to wear them because they're too hot. I have to admit that big rubber gloves are one of the last things I'd want to wear in this heat. But then bags and bags of trash are the last thing I'd want to touch. But such is the life of many of the people living in this area.

If the sorting is bad, some of the recycling techniques are worse. We drove by a go down where some kind of trash was being bured for recycling. I don't know what they were burning, but the air was so toxic I wanted to gag. Once again, not much in the way of protection for the people working and breathing in the fumes. It is truly grueling work.

All of this is tucked out of sight, just behind Science City, an amusement park and big attraction for middle class children. I never would have known any of it was there if I weren't working with the NGO.

In completely unrelated news, we went on a class trip to Shantiniketan over the weekend. It's the birthplace of Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Bengali poet. Later in his life he started a university there that saw such students as Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen. The whole town is really wonderful, and very peaceful, as is fitting for it's name, which translates to Abode of Peace. We spent the first day touring the town, the university, and the nearby sights on bicycles. One of the students cant' ride bikes, so we hired a bicycle rickshaw for her. I tried pulling her in it for awhile on a dirt road outside of town. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but then again she is very small and I wasn't going very fast. It is a good workout for sure. I actually had a lot of fun pulling her, and the ricksha-wallah got a good laugh out of it too. But the best part was the looks of confusion, shock, and amazement from the villagers we passed on the road. Seeing a young white girl pedaling a rickshaw is truly an unusual sight.

The next day we toured around some of the more distant sights by car. It was a very enjoyable trip.

I am attaching some photos from Shantiniketan, but I don't have any from Topsia.

Below see Ben with a calf outside of a small temple, a statue of the highly revered Rabindranath Tagore, a village barber, and a goat that somehow found it's way into a window of a village house.

~m

Week Two

I had a very busy second week in Kolkata.

I started volunteering with an NGO that works with slum and squatter communities in Kolkata (and a little outside of Kolkata) called Tiljala SHED (Society for Human and Educational Development). The first time I went to visit them, I didn't have much time, so I just went to the head office to meet everyone, and then I left. The office is a short auto ride away from AIIS. The next time I went, I helped edit the English in their 2011 Annual Report. Three other people work in the room where I generally sit when I go there. Shafkat, the son of the Joint Secretary, who speaks English really well and loves to talk (though I think I've convinced him to speak in Bangla most of the time, and to put up with my plodding speech in the language). He's in his mid-twenties, the person in the organization closest to my age. Then there are two women, both in their late twenties. One of them is the main coordinator for a sponsorship program for girls. She was actually a beneficiary of the program, which supported her all the way through college, and now she's running it. The other woman is her assistant. All three of them are very nice.

I went with T-SHED on Sunday to a village where they're building a program center. The village is called Paglahat, which literally means crazy (person) market. Lol I wonder who named it... Anyways, they were providing free health examinations and medicine to the villagers. I had the all-important job of writing the name, age, weight, etc of everyone who came on a card for them to give to the doctor, as well as in a notebook for T-SHED's records. If I hadn't been there, Shafkat would have been the one writing names. Instead he just sat next to me to help me spell the more obscure-sounding ones. Anyways, it was cool to see what they're doing out there.

On the way to Paglahat, we passed by the Kolkata Leather Corporation. Apparently it used to be in the city, but they moved it outside because it was causing too much pollution. Better to pollute the villages, right? Anyways, it was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. There were enormous piles of blue-green leather scraps all along the road. The chemicals the leather is treated with are highly toxic, yet there it was, literally tons and and tons of toxic waste, just sitting by the side of the road. The air reeked of chemicals.

Today after school I went to the TSHED office and then Aftab, whom everyone affectionately calls Mama (which means maternal uncle in Bengali), took me to the TSHED school in Park Circus. Park Circus, Mama told me, is the largest slum in Kolkata. I had never been in it before, only seen it when passing through the Park Circus Station by train. The inside was a maze. I'm sure I couldn't find the school again if I tried. It is tucked back deep in the slum. I'm told about 50 boys attend regularly, though there were only about 10 boys there when I went. The school is just for boys. TSHED runs a library in the slum which is just for girls, but because they had to choose whether to allow boys or girls in the school (I'm not sure why it had to be either/or), they chose boys because many girls cannot come because it is risky. The security in the slum is not so good. Many of the boys come after their classes at public school. It is not only a school, but a safe house where the boys can eat, play, sleep, wash, and get health check-ups. The informal classes are only a fraction of the attraction of the school. I had a good time playing and talking with the boys. We did lots of hand-clap games and they sang songs. They were very similar to the children CRAWL (the NGO I worked for a few years back) works with at Sealdah, another train station in Kolkata.

One boy had the skinniest arms I have ever seen on a child of that size. He told me he's six years old, which is about right for his height, but his arms are as small around as an infant's. Despite that, he came into the room with his arms cocked, showing off his (invisible) muscles. I exclaimed how strong he looked. Actually, he looks like if the wind blows too hard he might float away.

Anyways, I'm glad I'm getting to see the work that TSHED is doing, even though I haven't quite figured out how I will be helping them. I may begin teaching at that school or one of the other two that they run. We'll see.

Aside from working with TSHED, I was busy catching up with all my friends last week. One day I went back to my host house from last year to see everyone. Another day I met up with a friend and brought her to where I'm staying so I could give her a book she'd asked me to bring for her. Earlier on that day, I had gone with my class to College Street. College Street and the surrounding area is a whole maze of book shops. It's a really cool part of the city. I bought two books of Bengali short stories so I can practice reading on my own.

On Saturday I went back to Khardah for the first time since I've been here. It was wonderful to see everyone again. Seeing all my old students reminds me why I love coming to this country and why I'm taking the time to learn Bengali.

One of my students, a fifteen year old girl, ran off and got married without her parents' permission a few months ago. I saw her as I was leaving Khardah. She seems to be doing pretty well, so that was a relief. I told her it's illegal for girls to marry before they're 18 (before 21 for boys), and her response was "everybody does it." It's true that many people still do. I'm well aware of this fact. I just don't like it when it's someone I care about as much as her. Anyways, I was happy I got to see her at all.

~m

Borsha Kaal Eshe Gaelo

The monsoon has arrived! Though the rains started when we got to Kolkata on Tuesday, and came for a few hours every day, it wasn’t until Friday that we realized how forcefully the monsoon was upon us. Friday brought the heaviest rains Kolkata had seen in a decade. More than 15 centimeters fell in 24 hours, and the rain was constant for about a day and half. Some of you may have seen my blog last year about the flooded streets near my school last year. Well this was even worse. Luckily I didn’t have to walk through it to get to school, as AIIS sends a car to pick me and two of the other students up each morning, because I live so far and because they’re on the way from my place to the school. When we arrived, the streets were not yet flooded. But by the time class was over that day, the streets had turned into rivers. I went crazy taking pictures of it, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Arrival in Kolkata and My New Host Family

We were greeted in Kolkata by the first coming of the monsoon rains. It had not rained in the days, weeks, and even months leading up to our arrival, so it was very hot and dry (India’s summer season is mid-April to mid-June). But literally as we were walking from the airport to the car, it started to rain. I found it to be a perfect welcoming gift, because it means a breaking of the heat of the summer months. Everything was washed clean of its dust and grime, and Kolkata shone as we drove into the city. The colors somehow seemed brighter, the attitude softer and the city gentler than in Delhi. But maybe that was just because of my pre-existing affection for Kolkata.

We were taken to AIIS in Kolkata, and later our hosts/land ladies (the other three CLS students are staying in apartments rather than with host families) came to pick us up. I had asked to stay with my previous host family, but Protima Di, the head teacher at AIIS, had told me that was not possible. I originially thought that she was putting me with a family who is new to the organization, so I was going to guinea pig them in, so to speak. That, however, was not the case. CLS has a rule that each CLS student should have his or her own host family, so because the Mukharjees (my hosts from last year) have multiple rooms, Protimadi put two AIIS students who are not on CLS in that house. At first I was disappointed, but Protima Di, because she knows me so well from last summer, was able to choose a great host for me. Chitra Di is a really strong woman who exudes confidence and has an easy, genuine smile. I liked her immediately. She came to pick me up in her own car, which she drives herself. An older woman who can (or chooses to) drive is a rare sight in Kolkata. In fact, she is the first woman driver I’ve ever seen here. One time a saw a girl about my age learning to drive a car, and I’ve seen young women driving scooters and mo-peds, but never an older woman, and never her own car. So I was impressed from the moment we left AIIS. As some of you may know, traffic in India is absolutely hectic. But Chitra Di held her own and didn’t back down to men driving much larger vehicles. After one particularly bold move, the small, sari-clad woman, beeping and honking with the best of the them, turned me and said, “you have to fight.”

Chitra Di lives alone in a flat in New Alipur, in South Kolkata. She has one daughter, who is living and working in Delhi. Her flat is actually pretty far from my school, and from the metro, which is my only complaint about the arrangement, and, in my mind, totally worth it. She has one maid, Brihoshpoti Di, who lives in the servants’ quarters downstairs (who knew that modern apartment buildings have “kajer lok-er ghor” built into them?). Chitra Di’s apartment is small: two bedrooms, one large living/dining room, and a kitchen. Especially compared to the entire four-story building owned by the host family I stayed with last year, the new place is small. But I actually prefer it. Last year there were so many people who I didn’t know, and so many rooms I had never seen where I was staying. This year, there are just two other people, both women, and every room in the apartment can be seen from the middle hallway. There is a coziness to it that wasn’t at my previous place.

While it was weeks before I even found out where the kitchen was in my last house, here I am allowed, and even expected to carry my dishes to the sink after dinner. I know this sounds silly, but such a small task actually feels empowering in a culture where the guest is usually not to lift a finger. Though I still doubt I will ever be allowed to so much as make myself a cup of tea.

Chitra Di is a designer for a fair-trade NGO that exports handicrafts to Europe and other parts of Asia. As far as I can tell, she decides how a shirt, or a piece of furniture or a textile should look, and then the artists make it. Anyways, she is socially-minded. The first night I was at her place, she say down in front of the TV and asked me if I’d like to watch the news. My kind of lady! I was exuberant. Last summer I watched lots of TV with Maitrayi Di, though it was all Bengali soaps. With Chitra Di I watch CNN and BBC. Perhaps not as good for my Bengali education, but so much better for my taste in media and my ability to be informed.

Long story short (or, if you’ve read this whole thing, long story long), I really like my living arrangements for the summer.

~m

In Delhi

All 60 or so of us doing CLS in India landed in Delhi last weekend to have our in-country orientation. We visited the AIIS headquarters in Gurgaon, outside of Delhi, where there is an impressive collection of ethnomusicology sound recordings, archeological documents and literature from India. Amidst many hours of orientation, we were able to squeeze in a little sight seeing. We went to the Qutb Minar in Delhi, which is an ancient astrological instrument (it’s actually an enormous sundial). The minar is well-preserved, but some of the surrounding grounds are in ruins. The whole sight was very beautiful.

After our tour of AIIS Gurgaon, they took us to the Kingdom of Dreams, which is probably the closest thing India has to Disney World, minus the rides. It’s this immaculate fake castle, and on the inside they have shops and restaurants from nearly every state. I think they took us there just because it was close to AIIS (Gurgaon is a business-oriented suburb of Delhi where the ultra-rich live amongst towering headquartes of Multinationals and shantytowns of construction workers and other service people). Anyways, it was disappointed to have to spend two or three hours in the Kingdom of Dreams, which is a pathetically unrealistic representation of the country, when we could have been exploring Delhi and its real monuments.

Luckily we did have Monday afternoon free to go wherever we chose. I went with two guys from the Urdu program to Old Delhi. We went on the metro, which is one of India’s prouder recent achievements. The whole system was built, with the help of funding and technical support from the Japanese government (India is the biggest recipient of Japanese foreign aid), on time, within budget, and without any corruption scandals. There are five or six lines, and the trains are clean, fast, and air-conditioned. I was very impressed. By comparison, Kolkata’s metro system, which was built in the 80’s, has only one line, which runs from North to South (though they have recently expanded it further south, and are in the process of building an East-West line), and is un-air conditioned. It also generally runs on time, and for a fraction of the price. A ticket on the Kolkata metro costs from Rs 4-8 while in Delhi it’s Rs. 15-30 or so. Double the number to get the approximate American cost, in cents (a 4 Rupee ticket is about 8 American cents (though it’s actually probably closer to 9)).

We got out of the metro and basically guessed where to go, walking around until we could see the top of the Red Fort. When we got up to the gate, we realized that it was closed, as most monuments and museums in India are on Mondays. We looked at it through the gate, and then, in a roundabout way, eventually found the Jamuna Masjid. It was absolutely beautiful, though we declined to pay the Rs 200 entrance fee, so, like the Red Fort, we only saw it from the outside. After that, we wandered through some of the alleys in bazaar of Old Delhi before heading back to the metro. All in all, it was a fun afternoon, and it was nice to finally get out on my own, and be able to choose where I was going, rather than being ushered around.

On Tuesday morning, we all left for our different program locations.

The pictures of me at the Qutb Minar, the bazaar in Old Delhi, and inside the Kingdom of Dreams.