Last week, we celebrated two birthdays, one of a Hindu god and one of a country.
Lord Krishna is considered to be among the most attractive of the Hindu gods, which is supported by the fact that he has approximately 16,000 girlfriends. The fact that he is blue also adds to his sex appeal, as well as his ability to take a different form each time he sleeps with a different gopi (shepherdess).
Krishna was said to have been born at 12 midnight on August 15th, so at around 9 pm, women gather at the local temple and begin chanting and playing tabla/harmonium in celebration. I spent about 2 to 3 hours just chanting, playing instruments, and laughing (not to mention keeping an eye on my saree to make sure that it didn’t catch fire–this didn’t seem to be of concern to any of the other women). I think that my interest perplexed my host mother, given the fact that I understand 1 in every 10 Hindi words and, needless to say, my Sanskrit is lacking as well. Regardless, it was a really fascinating and warm environment...
The whole alter and pooja set-up was quite interesting, as well. Along with the standard alter offerings (fruit, money, fire, etc.), there was a golden cradle set up with a Krishna statue, and part of the prayer ceremony was rocking the cradle.
Then at midnight, a small Krishna statue is put inside of a hollowed-out cucumber and forced out to mimic Krishna’s birth. The cucumber is cut up and eaten in this rose petal-cucumber salad.
I’ve asked approximately 10 people a) why a cucumber? And b) what is the significance of eating Krishna’s mother’s womb? No one seems to know.
The other birthday was India’s Independence Day. I attended a celebration at a local boys orphanage, which provides school tuition, school supplies, food, housing, and job training to boys without parents or with single parents unable to provide for them. It was an interesting program: a series of performances of Sanskrit verses by students, each recitation topped with a vigorous ‘JAI HIND!’. There was also a tumbling team that made a pyramid of people with complex gymnastic moves and then had a small boy climb to the top and say ‘JAI HIND!’. The whole day sort of felt like a time warp...
On a completely unrelated note, I made buckwheat pancakes for my host family yesterday. I gave a plate of them to Kishaan, a servant who comes in the morning, and he just gave me this look, like, ‘What am I supposed to do with these?’ He ate the pancakes with dal and garum masala and said they were delicious.
I also made coriander pesto for my family twice (they flip over pesto, it’s incredible.), and both times, they seemed to enjoy the dish with lots of ketchup.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Walking to the Moon
It's Hindu festival season, so it seems like every other day, there's some new festival, fast, pooja, or pilgrimage. Plus, this Saturday is Independence Day, so all of the private school girls are furiously rehearsing for the dancing competitions. There are two teams who practice for four hours every morning under the balcony at Sambhali...
The first festival that I celebrated last week was Rakhi, which is the celebration of sisters and brothers. Everyone spends the entire day traveling around and tying fancy bracelets on the wrists of their brothers and sisters, feeding them sweets, and giving them a coconut (I'm still unclear about this one. I think its a Hindu symbol for prosperity.) Brothers give sisters money, jewelry, sarees, etc.
Then comes Tij, the holiday that culturally insensitive Dani has deemed an extremely sexist holiday. It's the day when women fast for the health of their present or future husbands, do pooja for their present or future husbands, and participate in a variety of other prayers and ceremonies to ensure that they are blessed with a good husband in the future or that their current husband is healthy. I told one of my friends at the local juice place (he's this really sweet man named Mohammad, who is a devoted Muslim and stops making juice five times a day to walk to the local mosque and pray. It's just this routine: drop the papaya, and go pray) that I thought boys and men should also fast and do pooja for their wives...that is if the holiday is truly a celebration of marriage.
The truth is, at least from what I've studied and what I've learned from the women I've spoken with, a woman is somewhat made by her husband in Indian culture. This is, of course, a vast generalization both because...well, it's a vast generalization and this is Rajasthan, so many customs and ways of thinking are more conservative. However, a woman really isn't a woman without a husband. A woman's identity is wifehood. So praying for a healthy husband is essentially praying to maintain a female identity. Being single, being divorced, or being widowed all make you less of a woman. As such, many women who are single, divorced, or widowed are cast out, gossiped about, denied jobs, etc...
There is, however, a beautiful part of Rij. The most wonderful part of Tij happens at night. All Hindu women come out of their homes around 11:00 to do pooja for the moon. So I went out with my host mother for a walk and saw all of these female faces lit with the fire of the pooja candle, swirling the prayer tray and chanting at the moon. It was breathtakingly beautiful for two reasons. One, visually, it was gorgeous. Two, the moon isn't a man. The meaning of this ceremony is simply to pray to God to continue keeping the world spinning, the moon in the sky, the tides coming, generally maintain the natural cycles that enable us to live on Earth.
My host father said something really beautiful the other day. I asked him why he believes so fervently in astrology, and he asked me: 'What does the moon do to the ocean?' I answered, 'Well, there are tides..." He said 'If the moon can effect the ocean, imagine how it affects humans, who are 80% water." Kind of a beautiful way to think about things, regardless of scientific accuracy.
Last night there was another festival where women must walk around at night until they see the moon. Until that time, they cannot take food or sit down. It was quite a sight seeing all of these women dressed in fancy silk sarees and jewelry just walking around...
The sexism here has been, of late, irritating and infuriating me. The way my host father speaks to my host mother sometimes, even though they have a really respectful relationship. The stories of sexual and physical abuse. The comments that men direct at women on the street. The way some women are limited to their home.
The fact that there is no word for a female orgasm in Hindi - the word only applies to men.
The name of the leading condom brand is "ManForce."
I had a really startling conversation in the car coming home from my host mother's brother's home. There were two women in the car (cousins?), Anjou and Sultana, and Sultana of them told me how lucky I was to be able to travel around and do things by myself. "I used to travel around India in college," she said, "but now, I can't go 3 km without my husband. I don't want to. I'm too scared to go out. I'm completely dependent on him."
The first festival that I celebrated last week was Rakhi, which is the celebration of sisters and brothers. Everyone spends the entire day traveling around and tying fancy bracelets on the wrists of their brothers and sisters, feeding them sweets, and giving them a coconut (I'm still unclear about this one. I think its a Hindu symbol for prosperity.) Brothers give sisters money, jewelry, sarees, etc.
Then comes Tij, the holiday that culturally insensitive Dani has deemed an extremely sexist holiday. It's the day when women fast for the health of their present or future husbands, do pooja for their present or future husbands, and participate in a variety of other prayers and ceremonies to ensure that they are blessed with a good husband in the future or that their current husband is healthy. I told one of my friends at the local juice place (he's this really sweet man named Mohammad, who is a devoted Muslim and stops making juice five times a day to walk to the local mosque and pray. It's just this routine: drop the papaya, and go pray) that I thought boys and men should also fast and do pooja for their wives...that is if the holiday is truly a celebration of marriage.
The truth is, at least from what I've studied and what I've learned from the women I've spoken with, a woman is somewhat made by her husband in Indian culture. This is, of course, a vast generalization both because...well, it's a vast generalization and this is Rajasthan, so many customs and ways of thinking are more conservative. However, a woman really isn't a woman without a husband. A woman's identity is wifehood. So praying for a healthy husband is essentially praying to maintain a female identity. Being single, being divorced, or being widowed all make you less of a woman. As such, many women who are single, divorced, or widowed are cast out, gossiped about, denied jobs, etc...
There is, however, a beautiful part of Rij. The most wonderful part of Tij happens at night. All Hindu women come out of their homes around 11:00 to do pooja for the moon. So I went out with my host mother for a walk and saw all of these female faces lit with the fire of the pooja candle, swirling the prayer tray and chanting at the moon. It was breathtakingly beautiful for two reasons. One, visually, it was gorgeous. Two, the moon isn't a man. The meaning of this ceremony is simply to pray to God to continue keeping the world spinning, the moon in the sky, the tides coming, generally maintain the natural cycles that enable us to live on Earth.
My host father said something really beautiful the other day. I asked him why he believes so fervently in astrology, and he asked me: 'What does the moon do to the ocean?' I answered, 'Well, there are tides..." He said 'If the moon can effect the ocean, imagine how it affects humans, who are 80% water." Kind of a beautiful way to think about things, regardless of scientific accuracy.
Last night there was another festival where women must walk around at night until they see the moon. Until that time, they cannot take food or sit down. It was quite a sight seeing all of these women dressed in fancy silk sarees and jewelry just walking around...
The sexism here has been, of late, irritating and infuriating me. The way my host father speaks to my host mother sometimes, even though they have a really respectful relationship. The stories of sexual and physical abuse. The comments that men direct at women on the street. The way some women are limited to their home.
The fact that there is no word for a female orgasm in Hindi - the word only applies to men.
The name of the leading condom brand is "ManForce."
I had a really startling conversation in the car coming home from my host mother's brother's home. There were two women in the car (cousins?), Anjou and Sultana, and Sultana of them told me how lucky I was to be able to travel around and do things by myself. "I used to travel around India in college," she said, "but now, I can't go 3 km without my husband. I don't want to. I'm too scared to go out. I'm completely dependent on him."
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
On Travel, Solar Eclipses, and David Foster Wallace
I'm officially coming to grip with the fact that blogging has no logical, sensical progression; that there will be gaps, leaps, assumptions, etc. that exist between and within entries, and it's unrealistic to hope for a complete, logical 'whole' that is a collection of blog entries (it's unrealistic to hope for a complete, logical idea, even...the mind oftentimes can't finish what it starts).
This morning, as I was watching my first solar eclipse from the roof of my house, I started thinking about the millions (perhaps even billions - in India, this is not an unfair assumption) of people in India and other parts of Southeast Asia doing the same thing at the same moment. I came downstairs to find my host mother watching the local Indian news channel, which was covering the eclipse in 5 different Indian cities, filming the parties, festivals, etc. happening in honor of the event...images of thousands of people gathered early in the morning with special glasses, waving flags and balloons, celebrating the occasion.
I guess I've had the concept of 'entertainment' (in its broadest,most philosophical sense) on the mind since I finished the only-recently-late David Foster Wallace's social commentary Infinite Jest about 2 weeks ago. For some reason, the book was made all-the-more powerful given my current context...I've been thinking a lot about why this 'semi-novel' feels so pertinent to my time here. On the surface, it couldn't have less to do with this context: a story set in the future, in both a drug rehab clinic and elite tennis academy in Boston, discussing a plot by wheelchair-bound Quebecois terrorists to sabatage the US by distributing a film that is so entertaining you die when you watch it. Okay, so here I am having finished this 1,000-page book, and I mysteriously feel like I was supposed to read it here...it was very strange. Throughout the final stages of the book, I felt like it was some sort of holy text or something, like whenever I opened it up, I was like Muhammad receiving some text for the first time. Very powerful, very odd given the fact that I've never experienced this sensation before. Reading, that is.
I've been thinking a lot about what entertainment actually is, how we qualify it, how it motivates everything we do. Going to touristy cities in Rajasthan, seeing how a large percentage of the Rajasthani economy (about 60-70%) revolves around tourism...around providing entertainment, a certain type of experience. In the simplest terms, that's what it comes down to.
Some people travel seeking entertainment, and some go seeking something else. There's this whole other aspect of travel - the part that involves a great deal of personal growth, discomfort, challenges, depression, loneliness...the things that can't really be provided for you, in the sense of externally providing entertainment, but things you find yourself. Perhaps it's the growth that many people seek, the growth that happens when we step/are forced outside of our comfort zone...
At least for me, I feel like I grow the most when I continually expose myself to new ways of being human. There is just nothing more jarring, nothing more enlightening than experiencing a way of living (a way of dancing, eating, praying, cooking, sleeping, working, relaxing, socializing, marrying, being born, dying, etc.) I've never experienced before. Of course, we know that it's possible to live differently than we do, that is, we can conceive of it, but to actually live in a completely different way - that's something else. That's experiencing another way of being human. I think that's why I love Anthropology so much - it's essentially an exploration of what being human is, how we got that way, and all of the ways we can be human. These seem like some of the most important inquiries out there.
I sort of had this moment the other day when I realized that an enormous piece of Indian culture involves sentimentality. One of my host brothers was returning back to engineering college in Gujarat (an adjacent state), and before he left the house to go on the train, there was a 'traveling' ritual. This is a Hindi ritual that families do before someone goes on a journey: each member of the family puts kum kum (the red powder) in a tilak (bindi for males) on the persons forehead, puts some grains of rice on the sticky red powder, and then feeds them a bit of sweets and a spoonful of yogurt (yogurt is supposed to be the official food of luck for traveling). Just like packing and showering are rituals before leaving home, so is this good luck ritual that brings the whole family together for about 5 minutes before someone leaves. It was extremely personal and moving, I suppose because these types of rituals are all over the place in India, and they do an amazing job of making moments sentimental and memorable.
This morning, as I was watching my first solar eclipse from the roof of my house, I started thinking about the millions (perhaps even billions - in India, this is not an unfair assumption) of people in India and other parts of Southeast Asia doing the same thing at the same moment. I came downstairs to find my host mother watching the local Indian news channel, which was covering the eclipse in 5 different Indian cities, filming the parties, festivals, etc. happening in honor of the event...images of thousands of people gathered early in the morning with special glasses, waving flags and balloons, celebrating the occasion.
I guess I've had the concept of 'entertainment' (in its broadest,most philosophical sense) on the mind since I finished the only-recently-late David Foster Wallace's social commentary Infinite Jest about 2 weeks ago. For some reason, the book was made all-the-more powerful given my current context...I've been thinking a lot about why this 'semi-novel' feels so pertinent to my time here. On the surface, it couldn't have less to do with this context: a story set in the future, in both a drug rehab clinic and elite tennis academy in Boston, discussing a plot by wheelchair-bound Quebecois terrorists to sabatage the US by distributing a film that is so entertaining you die when you watch it. Okay, so here I am having finished this 1,000-page book, and I mysteriously feel like I was supposed to read it here...it was very strange. Throughout the final stages of the book, I felt like it was some sort of holy text or something, like whenever I opened it up, I was like Muhammad receiving some text for the first time. Very powerful, very odd given the fact that I've never experienced this sensation before. Reading, that is.
I've been thinking a lot about what entertainment actually is, how we qualify it, how it motivates everything we do. Going to touristy cities in Rajasthan, seeing how a large percentage of the Rajasthani economy (about 60-70%) revolves around tourism...around providing entertainment, a certain type of experience. In the simplest terms, that's what it comes down to.
Some people travel seeking entertainment, and some go seeking something else. There's this whole other aspect of travel - the part that involves a great deal of personal growth, discomfort, challenges, depression, loneliness...the things that can't really be provided for you, in the sense of externally providing entertainment, but things you find yourself. Perhaps it's the growth that many people seek, the growth that happens when we step/are forced outside of our comfort zone...
At least for me, I feel like I grow the most when I continually expose myself to new ways of being human. There is just nothing more jarring, nothing more enlightening than experiencing a way of living (a way of dancing, eating, praying, cooking, sleeping, working, relaxing, socializing, marrying, being born, dying, etc.) I've never experienced before. Of course, we know that it's possible to live differently than we do, that is, we can conceive of it, but to actually live in a completely different way - that's something else. That's experiencing another way of being human. I think that's why I love Anthropology so much - it's essentially an exploration of what being human is, how we got that way, and all of the ways we can be human. These seem like some of the most important inquiries out there.
I sort of had this moment the other day when I realized that an enormous piece of Indian culture involves sentimentality. One of my host brothers was returning back to engineering college in Gujarat (an adjacent state), and before he left the house to go on the train, there was a 'traveling' ritual. This is a Hindi ritual that families do before someone goes on a journey: each member of the family puts kum kum (the red powder) in a tilak (bindi for males) on the persons forehead, puts some grains of rice on the sticky red powder, and then feeds them a bit of sweets and a spoonful of yogurt (yogurt is supposed to be the official food of luck for traveling). Just like packing and showering are rituals before leaving home, so is this good luck ritual that brings the whole family together for about 5 minutes before someone leaves. It was extremely personal and moving, I suppose because these types of rituals are all over the place in India, and they do an amazing job of making moments sentimental and memorable.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
B.I.I.
There's a very useful saying in the Indian NGO sector which is mostly uttered by foreign interns, but not strictly reserved to foreigners. Whenever things seem stagnant, frustrating, or downright unjust, and you just keep asking 'kyo, kyo, kyo?' ('why, why, why?'), there is often no answer other than "B.I.I"..."Because It's India." I guess, in short, BII means that you can't really explain why processes develop the way they do in a culture...I mean, you could, but this would mean a lengthy history lesson in Indian culture and the origins of Indian governmental structure, gender relations, religion, etc. We're not talking about 'It happened on the Mayflower in the 1600s ' here. We're talking about 'It happened in the Indus Valley in 2600 BCE.' India gives a whole new meaning to 'old.' Regardless, it's just easier to accept and work within (but by no means embrace) the way India does things.
Yesterday was BII overload, I have to say. A little background:
I've been working with this one woman Sati (pseudonym) on English and just talking about her beyond-shitty domestic situation in general.Sati and I have become fast friends: she's one of the most animated women at Sambhali, probably only slightly older than me. We've been having a great deal of fun together, me teaching her English while she teaches me some Hindi. We have this joke, 'ap mera adyaphak hai, ap mera viyarthi hai' (You're my teacher, you're my student)...she seems to really enjoy this relationship - I think it makes her more excited to learn English.
She showed me her wedding pictures and her husband looks no older than 15, no joke: his face is covered in acne, and he has that naive 15-year-old grin on his face. His family demanded 3 lakhs (300,000 rupees - a.k.a. a lot of money) for Sati's dowry, and her father, dollars signs in his eyes, forced her into marriage for the financial security that her husband's family would bring. It was funny, she had this photo album from her marriage with about 100 pictures in it, and after she finished presenting to me, I asked which one was her husband. She sort of had this reaction like, 'whoops,' and then pulled out one single blurry photo of him from underneath a picture of her mother. This is pretty much how she feels about her husband.
Her in-laws and husband are extremely abusive-she has bruises on her arms from where her mother-in-law threw her against a table and scars all over her face from her husband. Her father-in-law pours dirty water on the floor when Sati is cleaning it, just so she has to do the entire thing over again. Her husband wants her to give up her teaching position to help in his neon-sign business. Then, about a few months ago, Sati starts to realize that her husbandis literally mentally disturbed (from her description, he sounds either bipolar or schizophrenic). He can't work because of his mental instability, and his family essnetially demands that her family pay for his medication. Of course, their answer was absolutely not - they need to feed their own family and pay for their children to go to school (Sati has a younger sister and brother).
So Sati has been going through the process of trying to get a divorce in India, perhaps one of the most difficult and bureaucratic processes imaginable because a) it's not a very common process and b) it's looked down upon. Fortunately, in Sati's caste, she can remarry, so she has a choice in the matter. However, I can't help but think about all of the women who in the same situation stay with her husband because otherwise, she would be essentially disowned - I mean seriously disowned. Like people won't eat food that's cooked by her or drink water she's touched.
Yesterday, I went with Sati, her brother, and her mother (I had met them before when I visited Sati at her house after the program one day) to the High Court in Jodhpur, which is where all of the major Jodhpur district business gets done. This was pretty much my first exposure to India's government bureaucracy beyond the local panchayit system (this is the more local system of government representation where someone from the local area is elected to represent local concerns - the unique aspect of this system is that it's on a rotating caste and gender system, meaning that each year, there's a representative from a different caste and every certain number of years the rep. must be female...).
Like most institutions in Indian society, there isn't much red tape. Even in this government building, where the magistrates and collector (the equivalent of a US mayor) work, pretty much anyone can wait outside their door and walk in whenever they have the opportunity to. People just come for the day with their written complaints/cases and sit there for HOURS, waiting for various officials to show up. If the person is traveling to a meeting, people try to get into the car with him/her. Then they wait more. If the official doesn't show up, they do it all again tomorrow. This is just how it's done.
So we went to the high court and waited for 2 hours for this certain magistrate who my supervisor has a relationship with (this is also how things work), but this guy never showed. Then we're told that he'll be back at 2. So we go and grab some chai and bananas in some sketchy park nearby. We come back and wait another 2 hours. It's finally evident that this guy is not showing up anytime soon. So we go to the associate magistrate and walk into his office to present Sati's case.
The craziest part was that I thought that I was there to sort of stand in the background and represent the organization she's a part of and present the letter from my supervisor pleading the case...not so. As soon as we got there, Sati's brother just hands me the case statements and pushes me forward. Because of the color of my skin, I'm the natural spokesperson. Why? BII.Even though I have absolutely no authority in this situation...I'm not a lawyer, I'm not her father, I'm not familiar with the legal system...of course, after all of that waiting and asking different officials where to go, the guy just said he couldn't help us and that we needed to go to the civil court, which is on the other side of town. So next week, we're going to go to the civil court (which, I imagine is worse because there will be more people trying to file cases) and do it all over again. Sort of a moment of comic relief, however, was when I told Sati's brother that while today was a bust, Monday, "Ham kick some ass ja-on ghi" (We will go to kick some ass). He found this very funny, so now it's like an agenda item: "Dani, I see you on Monday at what time to go kick ass?"
The other 'BII' moment was when we were meeting to organize a press conference for the organization's year's activities and future projects, and my supervisor tells me I have to go and buy bedsheets as gifts for all of the journalists. And put them in shiny wrapping paper with ribbons. This, apparently, is how things are done: journalists only write stories when they're bribed with samosas, numkeen, chai, and fucking bedsheets, BII.
Friday, July 3, 2009
First set of photos
View from my hostel in the old city during my first week
The Fort, c. 1400 
A creche at Bari, a village about 45 minutes outside of the city
I have my camera temporarily stolen...
My street
My host brothers, Siddhant (L) and Siddharth (R)
Dancing at Sambhali...
Microfinance meeting in Setrawa
Best juice in Jodhpur
Wedding! (must blog about this at some point....)
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Epic Post, Part II
So I’ve just come back from an incredible day in Setrawa, a relatively large, rural village about 2 hours outside of the city of Jodhpur. My head is spinning right now, I’m thinking about everything that went on today, and the excessive desert heat doesn’t help much. I also drank village water straight from the well, I was just so thirsty, so we’ll see how that turns out.
Today was the general interest and informational meeting for a potential microfinance initiative in Setrawa. Essentially, the organization that I’m interning with is putting together a proposal to provide 5,000 Rps. loans to 40 women in the village, mainly for stitching and textile work, but also for handicrafts, livestock, and food. Around 30-35 women (from two different self-help groups in the village) showed up for the meeting, which gave 2 Hindi-speaking interns the opportunity to explain the overall microloan system as well as the risks involved. The self-help groups that have already been established will be used in the proposed microloan structure, which includes mandatory savings (50 Rps./month) over the 6-12 month pay-back period.
The school day was just ending, so we got a chance to spend time with girls, singing, dancing, etc. (I work at the Sambhali school near my home in the city, but there is also one in Setrawa. Both schools do sewing/stitching training and teach English.) The girls had a very impressive repertoire, including some traditional Marwari songs as well as ‘You are My Sunshine’ and ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I sang the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ very poorly and did some kathak as well. I then sat down at the meeting and began fanning myself and another elderly woman with a cardboard flashcard of famous Indian architecture…
I think the most incredible part about today was seeking this lofty concept of ‘microfinance’ on a very basic, fundamental level. Today was literally the beginning of the entire initiative: explaining how the system would work, having a discussion about its feasibility, and collecting information about the problems that the system will face in this specific community. For example, stitching and sewing are considered prideful, accomplished trades for an Indian woman, so most women are interested in producing clothing, textiles, etc. But economically, all women can’t produce the same items, it will just lead to a race to the bottom. That was a major point of contention. It was also easy to see the tensions between the wealthier members of the village and those who have their food subsidized and are involved in public works projects (the wealthier women usually are interesting in positions of power within the SHGs, so this may become a serious problem when loans are distributed).
Then, we had chai with two of the school teachers in a modest, concrete-floor house that reminded me a lot of Frida Kahlo’s studio (the colors)…best chai I’ve had yet in India, by far. I have so much to say about all of these issues, but I’m going to wait until I have time to write a long rant/essay/reflection piece about the microfinance project and the politics/problems associated with it…very humbling, this whole process.
Today was the general interest and informational meeting for a potential microfinance initiative in Setrawa. Essentially, the organization that I’m interning with is putting together a proposal to provide 5,000 Rps. loans to 40 women in the village, mainly for stitching and textile work, but also for handicrafts, livestock, and food. Around 30-35 women (from two different self-help groups in the village) showed up for the meeting, which gave 2 Hindi-speaking interns the opportunity to explain the overall microloan system as well as the risks involved. The self-help groups that have already been established will be used in the proposed microloan structure, which includes mandatory savings (50 Rps./month) over the 6-12 month pay-back period.
The school day was just ending, so we got a chance to spend time with girls, singing, dancing, etc. (I work at the Sambhali school near my home in the city, but there is also one in Setrawa. Both schools do sewing/stitching training and teach English.) The girls had a very impressive repertoire, including some traditional Marwari songs as well as ‘You are My Sunshine’ and ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I sang the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ very poorly and did some kathak as well. I then sat down at the meeting and began fanning myself and another elderly woman with a cardboard flashcard of famous Indian architecture…
I think the most incredible part about today was seeking this lofty concept of ‘microfinance’ on a very basic, fundamental level. Today was literally the beginning of the entire initiative: explaining how the system would work, having a discussion about its feasibility, and collecting information about the problems that the system will face in this specific community. For example, stitching and sewing are considered prideful, accomplished trades for an Indian woman, so most women are interested in producing clothing, textiles, etc. But economically, all women can’t produce the same items, it will just lead to a race to the bottom. That was a major point of contention. It was also easy to see the tensions between the wealthier members of the village and those who have their food subsidized and are involved in public works projects (the wealthier women usually are interesting in positions of power within the SHGs, so this may become a serious problem when loans are distributed).
Then, we had chai with two of the school teachers in a modest, concrete-floor house that reminded me a lot of Frida Kahlo’s studio (the colors)…best chai I’ve had yet in India, by far. I have so much to say about all of these issues, but I’m going to wait until I have time to write a long rant/essay/reflection piece about the microfinance project and the politics/problems associated with it…very humbling, this whole process.
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