Oh noes! Academics!

I will say this: Though I have learned a lot in India, and I’ve loved the trips and activities that we have done as a program, I miss Northwestern’s academics. I just came off a really great quarter where I did most of the readings and engaged in class discussions and learned a lot about the topics of the courses. Coming here where the learning, shall we say, mostly happens outside of class is... a bit frustrating.

For example, the readings for our Social Justice class are really cool for getting started thinking about the ideologies and social movements that have shaped modern India and how we can use that past to make the future better. But in class we basically get a recap that mentions the names of movements but not really why or how they work on a deeper analytical level. We don't discuss, for example, the fact that Ambedkar never successfully synthesized caste- and class-based struggles, and ended up using a Marxist framework for class and a religious framework (Navayana Buddhism) for caste discrimination.

And then I go to the Contemporary India Class, which is the one that everyone takes, more or less, and we’re talking about the same issues. Of course, the majority of people in the Contemporary India class haven’t done the readings for Social Justice because many of them aren’t in it. Even if they are, too, I wouldn’t be surprised that they didn’t read any of the Social Justice readings because they’re long and dry and require unpacking which we simply never do. For that reason, we don't get that level of deep theoretical involvement. (People in my program: Do you do the readings? If so, would you like more discussion of them, or are you happy the way things are?)

In reality, though, my frustrations on this end are primarily with the Social Justice class; the sort of theoretical discussions that I want are not in the scope of the Contemporary India class. In fact, Contemporary India Class is the best non-language class I am taking. We have had several thought-provoking discussions that engaged most of the class. Our assignments have also, in my opinion, been helpful for synthesizing both what we have seen and observed (for example, on the Mumbai trip) and for encouraging class engagement (as students give presentations on the readings which lead us into those great discussions).

My Social Entrepreneurship class, meanwhile, has really cool visitors who do cool things and who I’ve learned from. For example, this past Friday we were visited by someone who works with SWACH, which is a cooperative waste-management system where women particularly from lower caste and economic status used Pune's Municipal Corporation's legal responsibility to provide trash pick-up to create an official organization that both cheaply removes waste from people's houses and provides materials to be sold for scrap. Before SWACH and the associated waste workers union, people scavenging for recyclables and trash were subject to police violence and without access to regular employment. This has changed drastically since the union began in the early nineties. In short, SWACH functions as a recycling service that empowers women who were previous to be self- and community-supporting economic actors. It's a good example of the really cool things that people are doing in Pune that we have the unique opportunity to learn about.

The lectures by the professor, however, are vapid discussions about the “personality traits of social entrepreneurs” and how they’re some sort of special kind of person. Which is, of course, a counterproductive discussion for a class of people who want to pull off similar ventures in the future and are hardly able to change their personalities on whim. I’ve tried asking questions to get some nugget of knowledge from the professor but it hasn’t really worked. This class most of all makes me wish I could take a SESP class on organizational development instead.

Another bright spot is the Intermediate Hindi class. My professor is very good at correcting and teaching, even though sometimes I can get a bit touchy because she's teaching correct academic Hindi, which pronounces "यह" as "vuh" instead of "vo", instead of slightly syncretic Lucknow-Hindi, which is what I want to learn (because it's my fathertongue). Because I'm the only one in the class, I get a lot of personalized attention and my every sentence is corrected. Being the only student also means that the class has been slowing down primarily because I haven’t been putting in enough effort to study and look up what I don’t know (because I was out of town and sick, mainly). I may have to start working on Hindi instead of doing the readings for other classes. It’s probably a much better use of my time, especially given that my deadline for understanding Hindi is fast approaching and my deadline for understanding Indian social movements is at least a few months away.

Reflections from Mumbai

Note: One assignment for our Contemporary India Class is to write about our experiences in Mumbai after the Mumbai visit. This is a adaptation of that paper.

A lit-up horse-drawn carriage near the Gateway to India welcomes us to Mumbai's nighttime buzz.

Thursday night around 9:30 seven of us sat around a large table at Colaba Social, a cafe that morphs into a bar at night. Around us are dozens of t-shirted, suited, and skirted Mumbaikars, all socializing, drinking, yelling over the noise of the music and people or sitting shielded from the sound by cushy booths and short walls. Our group of white Americans stands out somewhat, but the waiters and bartenders don't give us a second glance and speak fluent English; it may not be tourist season, but in this part of the old colonial center westerners are hardly newsworthy. Much of the conversation around us is partially English. Several of us have alcoholic drinks, which with tax cost upwards of 600 rupees, a price that wouldn't look unusual in an American establishment.

The stamp we received upon entering. It says the English words "You are awesome" in Devanagari script. Is it a quirky stamp or a distraction from the brutal inequalities outside?

One of us tells us that she saw a child outside, who was begging for change (change that amounted to a small percentage of what we all, Mumbaikars and Americans alike, were spending that night) get hit by one of the men guarding the door. As we discuss that a few minutes later during a smoke break outside of the bustle of the bar, we wonder at how strange it is that none of the Indian patrons seemed to even notice the incident. Not knowing anyone but our group personally, I suspect that at least some of the wealthier Mumbaikars do care about social uplift, and may even work actively for better opportunities for those in the city without them. However, just like our group was at this bar at least in part to distract ourselves from the implications of our experiences in Dharavi earlier that day, those socially aware Mumbaikars could be willing to turn a blind eye in order to more fully enjoy their night off.

Of course, that does not make it okay to ignore the abuse of children. One of the other children comes up to us and asks for money using an eating gesture. Neither of us give her anything.

The next day on the bus, we discuss how unique the use of violence to attempt to erase poverty from the minds of affluent consumers is to Mumbai. I express the opinion that American cities do precisely the same thing, though the weapons used to control the expression of poverty are somewhat different (at that point I mention the purposeful reshaping of benches to make it impossible for people to use them as beds, though in retrospect a combination of zoning laws and predatory lending practices are much more to blame; Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations does a good job of discussing the mechanisms). Another person is not convinced that poverty is expressed in a qualitatively different way on the streets of major cities. I have walked by homeless men begging in Evanston, Illinois dozens of times, after all (and homelessness among school-age kids continues to increase in Chicago). I agree with this perspective, and while quantitatively India remains much more unequal than the US, many of our first reactions overstated the difference of “glaring poverty”. Perhaps a better explanation is that we forget that in the US we are in that privileged position where poverty is often invisible, or at least we block it out. Perhaps the reason none of the Mumbaikars we saw reacted to a kid being beaten for begging is that the inequality is commonplace and thus easier to block out.

Government-sponsored housing being built as part of "slum-rehabilitation" advertises its finished form. Who knows when or if it'll be finished like in the sign?

 Of course, this is not to deny that there are major differences between the character of poverty US and India. Government-based social welfare, especially, is much more expansive in the US. There is much more government-subsidized and built housing the US than the comparatively limited slum rehabilitation projects, and those projects have existed for much longer in the US. Thus, a much higher percentage of Americans are have access to formal social welfare, which puts them, at least legally, in a very different category than people in Dharavi and other non-homeless people outside the Indian formal economic-housing sector. Yet those American communities have their own problems, such as rampant unemployment and high crime rates. By contrast in Dharavi entire industrial and artisanal communities live in places that to us appeared deplorable but remained thriving communities, full not only of economic production but grassroots organizations such as LEARN that are devoted to social uplift within the community.

Potters in Dharavi knead the clay to get out the air bubbles. There are dozens of artisanal communities in Dharavi, who make everything from leather goods to clothes to raw materials extracted from trash.

 If we look closer, though, poor American neighborhoods also have grassroots organizations dedicated to social uplift. Both in India and the US communities develop solutions to their problems, and even though many of the problems common in the US are different from those common in India, the tools of analysis and organization used in Dharavi's grassroots organizations can both raise awareness of and contribute to grassroots organizations in the US.

Seeing the inequality on the ground in India, feeling the discomfort that comes with being made aware of our privilege as we walk through Dharavi or see kids begging on the streets, learning the solutions community organizations have developed, should not just make us personally more aware of the challenges faced by large parts of the population of Mumbai and India more generally, but should motivate us to seek change where we can be most effective using those tools. As American students (most of whom to my knowledge did not grow up in the projects) who are allies to underprivileged groups in the US, our experiences in Mumbai must help us see not just the poverty, but also the vibrancy and solutions (economic and social) that have been developed in places like Dharavi. We must use that knowledge to contribute to social an economic justice both abroad and at home.

Dharavi, an area of Mumbai settled by informal communities. Though it is known as "Asia's largest slum", it is a thriving community with dozens of major cottage industries.

Wetlands in the heart of Mumbai. Dharavi is built on land that claimed from these wetlands by dint of considerable labor.

I don't have any formal questions for the interactive portion, but I'm curious wha thoughts you all have about different sorts of poverty, what the responsibilities of people with extra resources are with regard to creating a more equal society, and how decisions can be made that take into account the needs and choices of various groups.

Social Entrepreneurship Field Visit: Arvind Gupta

September 11th the Social Entrepreneurship class visited Arvind Gupta, of www.arvindguptatoys.com, who makes toys that teach scientific principles out of trash and easily accessible items. His work also includes creating videos, providing PDFs of old, useful textbooks, and compiling various other educational materials which are available for free on his website.

Here are some of the toys that he created:

Simple motor using a magnet, battery, safety pins, and a coil of wire.

A model of the digestive system using trash.

A toy that demonstrates the strength of triangles using matchsticks and bicycle tubing.

In our class we've been talking about what social entrepreneurship is, and more or less our definition of a social entrepreneur is leadership skills and a mission for social change. Arvind Gupta is a great example of that; he's full of stories and several of my classmates mentioned that they were back learning science in grade school again.

Telling us a story about how children can create engineering marvels.

One problem that came up, though, that I suspect will be reoccurring with regards to social entrepreneurship, is that it's hard to see how well the work is actually doing what it's meant to. From Google and site statistics, the people working with him all know how many downloads and videos have been watched, but whether those children who are getting access are the targets (poor children without quality schools, especially girls) or otherwise already privileged kids (ones that already go to the best English-language schools) is impossible to tell.

A classroom full of girls learning about science toys.

We did, however, get to see the kids learning while we were in the building. Admittedly they were more interested in us than the demonstration at the time, but it was cool to see that, at least, those hundred-ish girls were all learning science. Given the sexist attitudes many people in India and across the globe have toward women in science, that was pretty cool.

I was also reminded of my high school physics experience with Mr. Tuttle, which was very hands-on and derive-the-information-yourself. This is one point that I think I diverged from the other visiting students and even from Arvind Gupta himself. The toys don't have any sort of way to measure output, which means that while kids will have fun and see some scientific principles at work, they don't have the ability to help them figure out, say, conservation of energy, momentum, or mass. The hope I have is that, perhaps through the free books available on www.arvindguptatoys.com, kids will take their curiosity and go off and learn Science, the scientific method and the drive to proof rather than to heuristic, and not just being content with cool toys.

Interactive question: Have you ever been inspired by a teacher to do something you'd once thought you couldn't? More practically, Arvind Gupta and co. are looking for volunteers who know languages to translate textbooks and videos. They could use your help! They have many videos in Spanish, Marathi, and Hindi, but are more limited for others.

Ganapati (part 2)

The tenth day of Ganapati was also the day we returned from Hampi, so the day started late, after noon. Genevieve (G) and I were invited by one of my host brother's friends to go hang out at an apartment on Laxmi Road, where the roads were blocked off for the festival. My host dad took me as far as his scooter could go before the road block, and while we waited for G to show up I snapped a couple of pictures of some people on the outskirts of the festival, who were dancing and drumming covered in pink powder.

Enjoying the festival

After G arrived, my host dad led us through the street toward the main part of the festival. Along the way, we saw several Ganapati mandir-floats (much less elaborate than the ones we'd see later) and lots of stands selling food and small gifts, including these horror/ghost masks. I asked my host dad about what they meant, and he just said they were fun touristy trinkets, since the festival brought many people in from small villages who didn't have access to such things. So, apparently there's no symbolism, but lots of kids were wearing them.

Masks for sale

We also saw a large group marching in front a Ganapati mandir-float drumming on dhoms and hoisting flags. We saw a lot of both of those things throughout the night, and I was impressed by how much energy everyone had to keep that up for hours at a time.

The drums are called "dhoms" which might be an onomatopoeia

We met up with the people who invited us, and they took us further through the festival toward their apartment. We met the family and had a tea break in which we sat on the balcony and watched the festivities on either side of the alley the balcony looked out to. We saw drummers and mandir-floats on each side, and also people-watched the people in the alley.

We had a great view from the balcony.

Then we went down to the festival. At this point the sun was starting to set, but the best mandir-floats of the day started going by. I took some pictures, but zoom lenses, low light, and nothing to brace myself on makes blurry images, unless I'm right up next to the mandir.

A Ganapati idol in a Mandir.

At this point, though, the mandir-floats were playing dance music. G, our friends we were staying with, and I were pulled into the dancing. In order to stay with them, I ended up dancing in the crowd of girls, which led to some confusion because people were working hard to keep men and women separate when dancing. But other than that, it was a lot of fun. The music was a lot like American EDM but with some more interesting beats. It was way fun to dance to!

They kept telling us (in English) to put our hands up. (Oontz oontz oontz.)

We took a brief dinner break, where we all got roasted corn from a street vendor. It may have been the most delicious thing I had tasted after all that dancing; it was roasted corn brushed with salt, lemon, and red chili. I'm going to have to make some myself when I get home. Then we returned back to our friends house to eat dinner for real, which was delicious and pilaf. G made friends with a little girl in the family, and the three of us watched from the balcony some more. G went back for more dancing; I was exhausted so I watched House with another of the women in the family. When it was inching toward midnight, I went back out to join the others in dancing. We ended up in a circle dancing, until it was 12:00 and they had to shut off the recorded music. G and I slept over at our friend's place.

Laxmi road at night.

Throughout the night, though, people kept playing the dhoms and at 6:20 am the recorded music turned back on too. The whole last two days of the festival is 48 hours of straight dance-partying! And I thought Dance Marathon was a long party.
And now for you, dear readers, to share: What's the bumpin'est party you've ever attended?

Ganapati (part 1)

August 29th was the first full day of the Ganapati Festival, which is a Hindu festival celebrating the god Ganesha (who is also known as Ganapati), who is known as a remover of obstacles and the patron of intellect (and thus is popular in Pune, with it's large number of universities). Ganesha is also one of the most recognizable of the gods because he has the head of an elephant, and is very popular in both northern and southern India. The festival was revived to its current form (as my host brother Aditya explained while we ate breakfast made by his uncle, a local celebrity chef, at Rassa Roadies) by Lokmanya Tilak. In 1893, in response to British prohibitions of large gatherings of people for non-religious purposes, Tilak began promoting the festival as a time for people to come together...and exchange information that would be useful in resisting the British.

Now, it's a very public religious holiday. People set up Mandirs (temples or shrines) in the roads with Ganesha idols, and accompany the idols with statues of related figures, political events, changing lights, and even psychedelic music. (It sounds a lot like a rave near a lot of the Mandirs, to be honest.) They also make loads of sweets, because Ganesh loves being offered sweets (ask Genevieve if there can ever be such a thing as too many sweets). The celebration's length depends on the individual family, and can be anywhere from a day and a half to 21 days in length, with most people celebrating five or ten days. My host family celebrates for a day and a half.

A Ganapati shrine at my host brother's fiance's house

In the morning of September 2nd, I went with my host father and brother to go get the Ganesh idol. Traditionally one would walk barefoot, but we went barefoot in the car, which is a good balance of tradition and modernity to my mind. When we acquired the idol, which was small and made of environmentally friendly materials, we had to cover it with a sheet in order to (as I was told) prevent Ganesh from seeing the way back home and being tempted to go home rather than be a visitor in our house.

My host family's shrine

Upon arriving home, my host brother brought the idol to the doorway and my host mother gave us all tika, washed our feet in water in milk, and made circles with an oil lamp, in order to make Ganesh-ji feel welcomed. Then my host family, and one neighbor, decorated or presented the idol with flowers, plants (including basil, which is apparently a great medicine), fruits, and sweets (including modak, which is a coconut sweet). After a bit of the family singing in Marathi and me clapping some cymbals, that was the end of that day's celebrations.
It's quite strange celebrating religious festivals in India as a non-Hindu Indian-American, because there's the assumption that since my family is Hindu and I have a Hindu name that I'll at least go through the motions with people, but because I'm Christian instead I feel very uncomfortable profession devotion for gods I don't believe in. So it was a bit of a balancing act to only participate in the parts of the festival I was comfortable with (like dancing with people) while avoiding the parts I wasn't comfortable with (like declaring praises to Ganesh). The nice thing about Indian attitudes toward religion, though, is that everyone more or less picks and chooses what parts to do anyway, so it's not usually offensive to not do all the rituals that a specific family does.

My host family worshipping

The next afternoon, in order to allow Ganesh to return home, the family submerged the idol in a bucket of water, in which it dissolved. Traditionally, this was done by submerging the idol into the river, but the number of idols is such that it recently has become a pollution problem. Instead, some families immerse at home while others still walk to the river, but immerse their idols in large tanks set up by various different groups so the dissolved idols could be recycled. There also are some idols made from plaster of Paris which do not dissolve, but those have been phased out recently in order to prevent even more additions to India's unrecyclable trash problems. Throughout the next week and a half, though, lots of people were traveling through the streets to immerse their idols, so the festive mood continued even if my host family's participation was over.

The Ganapati idol after immersion

About a week later (September 3rd), people from the program were invited to another person's house to celebrate Gowri, which happens in the middle of the Ganapati festival when Ganesh's sisters come to visit. The shrine for the festival was absolutely gorgeous, and had everything from balancing birds to small fans to real fruit to fake fruit.

The Gowri shrine

From the program, Genevieve, Ryan, AJ, Sarah, Rachel, Zane, Uttara and I all went. We got to meet the family, which had several high-school-aged kids but was mostly people in my parents' and grandparents' generation. One of the people in the family was named Sanjay, which is cool because I think that was the first time I met someone I shared a name with (more or less). After we appreciated the shrine they gave us lots of sweets (so many sweets, more sweets than we could handle) and tea. It was a very nice evening. This was the last Ganapati celebrating I did prior to the last day, which I will discuss in my next post.

 

 

 

 

Another सन्जय

For all of you readers: Have you ever celebrated a religious occasion for a religion you don't follow? How did you negotiate that?

A day in the life: September 4th

Yesterday started without rain and before my alarm went off. Conveniently it also started with WiFi, so I was able to see my emails, send a couple Facebook messages, and catch up on QC. It was also my first day with my yoga mat, which meant I did a sun salutation and free body weight exercises for the first time in weeks. Then I met with Soren and Casey and we took a rickshaw to school, where Casey climbed up in a tree to meditate (I wish I took a picture, but unfortunately you'll have to exercise your imagination; perhaps you can borrow my yoga mat).

At breakfast we talked about the fact that the US is putting more troops in Iraq, and no one seemed surprised given that ISIS had massacred a bunch of people. I had thought that Americans were currently very skeptical of increasing involvement in foreign affairs anywhere, but perhaps public opinion shifted. It's very strange not being intimately connected to the US socio-blogosphere while I'm here; even Google News gives me India news primarily.

The outward-looking conscious mood of thought continued to our first class, where we talked about everything from Nehru's “Tryst with destiny” speech to farmer suicides to election turnouts to the Naxalite movement. The class started with two students doing short presentations on the readings, and the second presentation gave us a bunch of discussion questions which we discussed until thirty minutes after the class was supposed to end. My second class was Intermediate Hindi, and it's a one-on-one tutoring session because I'm the only one in the program who had taken any Hindi before. After that I wasn't thinking about international affairs at all because I was stuffing grammar into my brain.

Then, for lunch, Soren, Julia, and I went to CocoBerry, which is on the main road (Ferguson College Road) a short distance away. In case you couldn't guess from the name, it's a froyo place. Even more amazing, the froyo was all fruit-flavored. (For those of you who don't know, I have a deep abiding distrust of yogurt flavored like deserts rather than fruit. I don't know what people put in cheesecake froyo, but I'm pretty sure it's not actual cheesecake juice.)

Lychee, chocolate, green apple, blueberry froyo: A++ selection.

Besides froyo, the place had all sorts of American food. Mission-style burritos and burrito bowls from the west coast, bagels from the east... Basically, it's perfect. I want to go back. This is how we all felt about it:

Soren and I switched faces, and that's why she's so much more excited than me.

After lunch, we had to go home for the day to meet a police officer who is supposed to check to make sure we're all living where we say we are. Casey, Soren, and I got in a rickshaw...but halfway home we got a text message saying the police wasn't coming that day. Soren stopped the rickshaw and went back to the program center; Casey and I continued home because there's a phone store and we needed to put money on our phones, and after we did that we went to Big Bazaar.

I got a scarf at Big Bazaar. Or perhaps the scarf got me.

Big Bazaar is basically the Indian equivalent of WalMart. I got a scarf and jeans for a total of, like, $15, and afterward got a veg hotdog at this place called “My Kitchen” which is between Big Bazaar and my house. Casey had gone to the program center and back and then we studied Hindi for a bit. My teacher had given me a children's book to practice reading, and Casey sounded out the letters she'd learned in Beginning Hindi while I read simple phrases. We got (black, sugarfree Assam) tea from my host family, and then she went home.

The children's book's Hindi exercises

To top off the day, my didi (who is technically my second cousin but in my family's India we call our older cousins older siblings) came to visit, along with dada and dadi, who are her grandparents. We all shared sweets with my host parents and tried to talk in Hindi (though dadi spoke almost no English and I speak almost no Hindi, so we made do). We even tried to take a selfie! But not all of us fit in a picture, so here's one of my family and me taken by my host parents:

Me, Konica didi, Dada, Dadi

Now for the interactive portion: How much did you travel yesterday? That includes commuting to work and school or any shopping excursions or strange detours.

A brief interlude

Behind me there is a beautiful vista of green mountains dotted with buildings descending down to an orchard of (coconut, probably) palm trees that can be seen from a penthouse balcony. In front of me there are hung photos of the Himalayas, capped in snow. To my left there is the seat in the shape of a camel. To my right, a dining table. I am sitting on a turquoise-embroidered couch that has a twin and matches the chairs at the table. Above my head there is a rooftop terrace I hear has an incredible view. Around me is a 1000+ square foot apartment furnished shiny and green and with an extra room that's likely to become a child's room in a couple of years.

A view of green hills

Matching couches

Pictures of snowy mountains

Matching upholstered chairs

This is the home of my host family's oldest daughter and her husband, who I am staying with for one night as my host parents take their oldest son to the Mumbai airport, where he will be flying to France for his MBA.

It is beautiful, pristine, and elegant, so unlike the streets below or anywhere else I've been in India. I am reminded once again that there are multiple Indias. One of them is this quiet penthouse apartment.


Note: One of the next two posts will be on Ganapati, and will contain my experiences both from my host family celebrating and from the large procession which has yet to occur. The other will probably deal with either classes or my weekend travels.