Hamara Mantra: Jai Jagat! Hamara Tantra: Swach Gaam

Our mantra: Hail to the World! Our Goal: A Clean Village

DAY 1

September 6,7 and 8 were days that were almost as perfect as they get. I traveled in the Nandini Van, which is a bus equipped with all sorts of facilities, with the Learning Journey group from the UK and some Manav Sadhna staff and volunteers, and Jayeshbhai, co-founder of Manav Sadhna. Amal, Biney, Nishma, me, and a few others sat on one part of the bus while the rest of the Learning Journey group sat in the other half singing as loudly as possible.

First, we stopped in a small village, where they had prepared a large lunch for us--the whole village was waiting outside and had set up cots with quilts on them for us to sit on under the shade of trees. They served us with love and we ate to our stomachs' content (well, actually, probably more than our stomachs were content to eat, which tends to happen a lot in India) and we served them after we were done eating. Then, we talked to the whole small village which had gathered and went to see their organic farm--children grabbed our hands and took us there. They picked us some fresh beans to eat and raced around the farm. Then, we wall went to the town well, where Harry jumped in and Dharmesh and Biney proceeded to get me and another girl soaking wet. No worries though, in the September Gujarati heat, we dried up within half an hour.

When we reached the village (gaam) in which we were to stay for the next two nights, Pimpal, hundreds of its residents gathered around the bus and car which we arrived in, playing dholaks and welcoming us with kankoo and rice tilaks on our foreheads. Jayeshbhai spoke to the village on the stage which was located on a large open ground in the village, and our host families came to take us to their homes.

...lots more later...

Research and Relationships

On Sunday, my day off, I started and finished the book "Gang Leader for a Day" by Sudhir Venkatesh. It's a pretty amazing book--if you haven't read it, you should. It's about a naive UChicago sociology grad school student who goes into a low-income housing project area called Robert Taylor to get subjects to answer a multiple choice survey that his professors have assigned him. He ends up being held hostage at gunpoint by a gang leader and then becoming friends with him. He gets much more out of the relationships he builds while talking to tenants and gang members living in these project areas than he would have gotten by simply having them answer survey questions. He ends up receiving a Harvard Fellowship and is now a professor at Columbia. An englightening, true story, it's a great book to read, especially for someone foraying into the world of development research for the first time.

Here are a couple quotes/excerpts that especially stuck with me, as feelings that I'm experiencing to some degree:

"No one back at the U of C had prepared me to feel such strong emtional connections to the people I studied. None of the ethnographic studies I'd read offered much guidance about the relationships a researcher formed during fieldwork and how to manage them. The books talked about the right way to ask a question or address a respondent during an interview, but little about managing relationships with the people you hung out with" (43-44).

"People who knew nothing about me nevertheless took me inside their wrld, talked to me with such openness, and offered me the food that they had probably budgeted for their own children" (43).

This last quote is just as true as it is surprising, even in India. If a person has invited me into their home, whether it be a bungalow, a flat, or a tent made out of tarp, he or she always offers me food and tea. Ajaybhai, who is one of the staff members at Manav Sadhna who lives in a nearby slum area, invited me to his home, where I met his mother and sister. I sat with them for about an hour, and looked through an entire album of his 22 year old sister's wedding, which happened a couple months ago. The openness with which him, his family, and everyone that I've met at Manav Sadhna share their lives with me is astounding. I don't think that many people experience the kind of genuineness that I've experienced in the past couple summers.

Of course, not every research subject is open or willing to answer questions--yesterday, I went into a slum area that government and NGO implementers do not frequent very often, and slumdwellers don't get or aren't aware of many services that other slumdwellers living closer to an NGO get and are aware of. As a result, many of those slumdwellers were not very keen on answering any of the questions that I had. When I asked them about who they go to for help with certain needs and services, they started talking in raised voices, crowding around me while I tried to interview one of them, and kept pushing my arm to make a point--"people like you come around here all the time, to study poor people like us, asking us questions, and writing our names down. But no one actually helps us. Some people come and take money from us so that we can fill out forms. What are YOU doing? Are YOU actually going to help us? No, you'll just 'study' us, write your report for college, write our names, and never come back." It's useless to try to explain to them that their responses could help form policies that could then help other people in the future. And of course it's useless--why would people who live day to day, not knowing if they will have food to eat the next day, want to spend their time answering questions that probably will not even directly help them?

Sudhir Venkatesh wrote: "I, meanwhile, grew evasive and withdrawn--in large part out of guilt. Within just a few months at Harvard, I began making a name for myself in academia by talking about the inner workings of street gangs. While I hoped to contribute to the national discussion on poverty, I was not so foolish as to believe that my research would specifically benefit J.T. or the tenant families from whom I'd learned so much" (277).

By volunteering with Manav Sadhna, the NGO with whom I'm working closely and who is helping me get subjects to interview in the slums, I feel like I'm at least giving a little bit back to the community. I teach English to a staff member and to some 20 7th-9th grade slum children. Sudhir Venkatesh says in his book that he started a writing program for women living in Robert Taylor to try to cope with the guilt of not being able to directly help the tenants.

In the end, I don't really know how to solve the dilemma of knowing that the subjects that I am interviewing will never actually directly reap any benefits that may come from the results of my research. But maybe, just maybe, the next generation of people living in this slum area will have access to better services because government departments and NGOs working in them will be able to create more effective development project models.

Spirituality

Wednesday to Friday of last week, I went on a trip through Saurashtra, the western region of Gujarat which is known for its many temples. Located in crowded, rundown areas, these temples stand out as beautiful pieces of architecture where people can come and worship. However, worship a Hindu temple is nothing like worship in, for example, a Christian church. Tranquility and silent prayer is not common. Rather, at the aarthi (special prayer) that occurs every evening, scores of people push to get as close to the murti (relic) of whatever god or gods the temple is dedicated to.

It's interesting for me to see such different types and locations of worship, each with its own approaches.

First, we visited the ruins of a mosque located in an old fortress.

Next, we visited various Hindu temples all over Saurashtra, including the locations where the Lord Krishna is supposed to have "died" (let go of his human form).

Shrine by a temple

In the Hindu Somnath temple, located on a beach, as everyone was clapping and shaking their heads with smiles on their faces, pressing together to get as close to the relics as possible, raising their arms while chanting prayers in different speeds and tones, ringing the big bell, and drums were playing and someone was blowing on a conch shell, I felt a real sense of uplifting and camaraderie. I saw a moment in which everyone was really worshipping together.

At the beautiful Jain Derasars, I found similarities with other Hindu temples in the barefootedness and mutliple shrines erected around the derasars--shrines found on trees or at the side of the steps leading to a temple are not uncommon in India. I also found a different approach to worship. I saw white-haired people climbing 3500 steps barefoot, alongside herds of cows, donkeys, and dogs to get to some 50 to 100 Derasars (temples) at the top of the mountain in Palitana. I also saw women with heavy loads on their heads, herders, and little children climbing to the top. Very religious Jains climb the mountain to worship at the Derasars 90 times in 4 months as a sort of penance, to show the lengths they are willing to put themselves through to get closer to god and worship him in the fullest way possible.

The beginning of the climb

One of the early Derasars

Some little temples that serve as rest stops on the way up

A shrine by the side of the steps

Catching up with the cows

2651 steps completed

Women coming back down from the Derasars

Gorgeous Derasars at the top:

In a completely different way, observing those quietly worshipping in a church or singing a hymnal gives me a sense of spirituality as well. It's interesting that tranquility and loud chanting, sitting in an air conditioned place of worship and braving the monsoon season or the hot summer to climb thousands of steps, though very different approaches, are all ways that people try to get closer to god.

For me, seeing these beautiful types of worship makes the unavoidable and all too prevalent contrasts of religious violence and the isolation of religions hard realities to accept in today's world.

Horn OK Please

Foreigners come to India and completely freak out at the driving and Indians have a pretty bad rep in terms of their driving skills. But I'm writing this post to refute that reputation.

I think that Indians have the most fantastic driving skills of citizens of any other country. Reflexes like theirs are hard to cultivate anywhere else. I really believe that if you can successfully drive on an Indian road, you can drive almost anywhere else in the world. Sure, they don't always follow traffic laws (okay, so they never do)--no speed limits, overtaking from the right and the left, driving on the wrong side of the road--and sure, most Indians have fake licenses/licenses gotten from bribing agents...but just the fact that someone has driven on the road in India and hasn't died or run someone else over is something to really sit back and marvel at for people like me, who stress out in traffic jams in America. Just the other day, I sat on the back of the scooter my cousin was driving as she navigated through a jam in Ahmedabad--we had to get to the other side of a two-lane road to turn, and there were generally about 6-7 vehicles side by side, with one scooter-driver's foot right next to a rickshaw wheel. It made me wonder how many people have had their feet run over here.

In the past 3 days, my dad, sister, and I along with my dad's friend took a driver and went to different towns all over Saurashtra, the western region of Gujarat. We rented a large van, and driving in a large vehicle in India takes an amazing amount of skill. Here are some things I learned:

First of all, you must learn to share the road with jay-walkers, rikshaws, scooters, trucks, other cars, cows, bison, donkeys, sheep (and all their various herders), stray dogs, women carrying enormous loads on their heads, and much more.

Second of all, no matter how many lanes there are, always drive in the middle of the road. So, if there are 2 lanes (one going one way, the other going the other way), drive on the middle line. That way, you can pass a slow moving vehicle that's driving to the left of you, or a faster car can pass you from the right.

Thirdly, the horn is your friend. All trucks have some form of "Horn OK Please" written on the back of them. Just honk, they'll move to the left, and you can pass them quickly! This rule doesn't just apply to trucks--honk at anything and everything in the way. Even if nothing is in the way, when in doubt, honk--for instance, if someone is walking on the side of the road in front of your car, just honk a couple times-that way, they know that this really isn't the time to jay-walk. Of course, this is only the case on highways. On some local roads, the more you honk, the more a riskhaw or scooter will try to drive in front of you at an unbearably slow speed.

Find the "Horn OK Please" or "Blow OK Horn" slogan in the picture!

Finally, don't be scared, even if your driver is driving the wrong way on a one-way road. Really, there's no such thing as a one-way road--even if there is a truck coming straight at you at full-speed, the driver will surely move to one side somehow, even if it's only a couple seconds before the truck would have hit your car!

I'm telling you, it's all in the reflexes.

Research

Slowly, I'm getting started with my research. Things sometimes move along slowly here, so every day, I've been meeting with various Manav Sadhna employees to try to hammer out a schedule. I'll be going into the Ramapir No Tekro slum on Monday and Tuesday. I'm also going to go and see Sughad, the site of the sanitation institute which I've heard is amazing.Then, I'm going out of town (all over Gujarat) with my family from Wednesday-Friday. So, my interviews should officially begin next Monday, the 13th. I'll start interviewing slumdwellers by going into the Tekro with Sunilbhai, and also start meeting some local mentors.

I need to arrange a visit to the Ahmedabad Municipality Corporation to see if I can get any information about the hybrid government-NGO Ahmedabad Slum Networking Project.

Other than that, life in Ahmedabad right now is very, very hot! Walking to Chetna Behn's Anganwadi from Manav Sadhna takes 20 minutes, and in the midday heat, it's pretty sweaty. But, I've found that when I'm playing with the kids or talking to the volunteers and employees, the heat becomes secondary to everything I'm seeing and experiencing. Still, I have absolutely no idea how the kids manage to play tag outside at 2 in the afternoon!

Yesterday was the Saturday Special, where I was welcomed with a flower necklace and kankoo (red dot on my forehead) for the fourth time. This time, though, it was in front of over 100 kids.

I'm getting back into the habit of doing prathna, literally meaning prayer, every day. It's not a prayer that pertains to any particular religion, but rather one in which you close your eyes and repeat slokas with words and phrases about of not stealing, loving others, and having peace of mind (om shanti). I don't think there is anything more beautiful or peaceful than watching, listening to, and chiming in with a chorus of 20+ children who are generally wildly running all over the place sitting quietly and chanting "om."

I'll post more as my research progresses...

By the way, Happy Independence Day!

Emergency Lift Protocol

Getting stuck in a lift in India is not like getting stuck in an elevator in America. First of all, the emergency call button doesn't do squat. So, here is what to do if you ever get stuck in a lift in Ahmedabad, India in the summer (we will use dad as an example in the pictures):

1. First of all, no, the fan won't work. Press the button with the bell on it. Some weird-sounding siren will then proceed to sound. However, if as in my case, the people that equipped the lift with

the emergency siren decided to make it sound like a bird, chances are (surprise surprise) that people will think it is a very annoying bird. That's what happened to us. We pushed the button for a long time, but the people waiting for us at the bottom of the apartment building had a very lengthy conversation about what type of bird it could possibly be that was so persistent rather than realizing that we were stuck in the lift.

*side note--horns, AquaGuard music, and many other types of noisy things often play the weirdest tunes in India--for instance, the AquaGuad at my grandparents' home plays a "Dashing through the snow" tune every mornig as water is filtered. As you stay longer and longer in India, you realize that really, no two noise-emitting applicances ever sound the same. These horns and tunes blend with the monotonic voice of the guy walking down the street selling vegetables, the hum of scooters and rikshaws, peacock calls, various phone ringtones that are adapted versions of Bollywood movie songs, and the neighbors standing on their porches talking to each other. Though the mixture of all these sounds seems as if it would be chaotic, soon, it comes to be a comfortable soundtrack added to the storyline of my stay in India.

Now, back to lift safety protocol:

2. Though everyone that has ever lived in a dorm has learned NEVER to try to open the do

or when an elevator gets stuck, that is exactly the opposite of what you should do in the lift. Open and close the lift door several times so that the lift

music (in the case of this particular lift, it plays a very jarring, loud version of Fur Elise) plays and the slamming lift door brings attention to the fact that you are stuck. Also, yell loudly.

3. When someone finally hears you, tell them that you are stuck in the lift ("lift bandh thay gayi che!") and then ask them to call the watchman ("watchman ne bolavo!").

4. The watchman is often a very old, senile, slightly confused man that you can generally find sleeping in the shade of a tree somewhere in the apartment complex. So don't worry if it takes him a little while to come. Wait patiently.

5. When you hear him shuffling around the building, slam the lift door a few more times and repeat very loudly which floor (or between which floors) your lift is stuck on.

6. Wait as the watchman fumbles with the keys trying a bunch of different ones until finally he finds the one to the door to the floor that your lift is stuck on.

7. Climb out. And pray the lift doesn't start while you're climbing out. Climb out reaaaaalllly quickly.

8. Say "phew" as you look back. And go find a fan to sit under.

Now you know!

In other news, I've been going to Manav Sadhna for the past few days and it's been amazing seeing everyone (especially the kids) again!

Kajal (and Mit in the background)

Remember Manisha?

Annnnd Ashwin!

More later...