Significant events
Contrary to what my previous posts may have had you believing, my term here in India has not been all delicious food, cute children, cows on the streets and jangly anklets. Those were just the easier things to write about. The other bits, the harder bits, don't have pictures to write cute captions for. There is no "light" way to write about them, no obvious tone to adopt for an insightful or entertaining blog post, no concise concluding paragraph to sum it all up. I could omit them completely, continue on in the vein of cute cultural anecdotes and fun facts about India, but that would feel wrong somehow, as if I were keeping the difficult parts a secret or covering them up. I feel as if I've come to maintain a certain level of honesty and transparency by publishing my writing on a blog, so to leave out the most significant events of my term might feel like I was going backwards. I choose to write on this blog because sorting my thoughts out for others to read is the best way for me to make sense of my life – in the translation, or re-telling of what goes on around me, I learn much more than if I were simply reporting events through mass emails or keeping a diary for myself.
More...
Solitude Farm
On the second day of service learning at Solitude we started work on the house. The “Sultan of Solitude,” a.k.a. Krishna, asked us what we would like to get out of the experience and what kind of work we would prefer to do. “Whatever’s needed, sir. We are at your command,” we replied. So he sent us off to work on the house. Working on the house meant taking handfuls of mud (dirt, water, some sand, some human hair, and a touch of cow manure) and smearing it over chicken wire and metal rods, stretched in two-foot squares between wooden panels. There were a few other people doing the same thing, and I assumed that they were the experts. Little did I know that they hadn’t been there too much longer than we had. To get the job done, everybody cooperated and shared whatever knowledge or insights they had, and somehow we managed to start busting out some mean mud-panel walls. The first few weren’t very pretty, but they were still quite mean. We went back to the house almost every day for the first couple weeks of service learning, picking up new little tricks and strategies here and there. Soon enough, we found ourselves mud wall veterans, able to help teach others what we had only recently learned, which was very satisfying.
One of the super things about Solitude is that there is a constantly evolving, rotating batch of volunteers. The people I met during the first few days seemed so comfortable and at home that I figured they had been there for years. It didn’t take very long for me to feel about that comfortable, too. Krishna’s theory when it comes to taking in volunteers is that skills, experience, and prior knowledge stand second to having an open heart, an open mind, and an eager willingness to dive head first into the farm—not to mention the well, which we finally discovered during the last, and hottest, week there. During our time at Solitude, there was never a shortage of work, and it was so varied and all-over-the-place that it never became repetitious. Well, working on the house became fairly repetitious, but it was sloppy-muddy-fun enough that my interest never subsided.
Working with the land was what primarily attracted me to the farm, but the whole experience turned out to be deeply satisfying in unexpected ways. The place had a true feeling of community, despite the fact that many people might have only known each other for a matter of weeks. Plus, the lunches they serve there were highly enlightening in themselves. Whether farming, eating, or building walls from organic materials, my time there was a time of building a new relationship with the land, with myself, and with a dynamic new community of people. Super!
-Gordon
WELL Paper
“Good morning!” I holler as I climb the crumbling concrete stairs. “Hello! How are you!” respond eight of the most beautiful women I have ever come to know. They sit in a circle lining the edges of the small dark room. Newspapers, scissors, hammers, rulers, and small metal tea cups are scattered all over the room. Stacked high are hand woven baskets made from recycled newspapers. The women have spent many hours crafting the baskets by hand, while giggling and teasing one another the way sisters would.
I was welcomed into this group of women a little over six weeks ago. They belong to an organization called WELL paper; Women’s Empowerment through Local Livelihood. These women were chosen from multiple Tamil villages, all eight women immigrants to the Auroville area. They have all been taught how to weave beautiful baskets out of recycled newspapers. With the guidance of Orly and Danny, the founders of WELL paper, the women have been taught not only crafting of baskets, but empowerment methods and marketing skills, to eventually send them on their way of completely running their own business.
Currently the women are through with their trainings and sit together six days a week creating baskets. They receive orders from Orly and Danny and are responsible for producing the numbers they request. Together these eight women make up an unstoppable team, each woman has a special place in their group, and all are equals. The past couple of months I have been sitting with these women for a few hours five days a week. We struggled to communicate, none of the women speak very much English, and I do not speak more than two words of Tamil. Somehow we found our way through these barriers, through laughter, songs, smiles, and the pure feelings of friendship. These women have given me more than they will ever know, I have become stronger through their endurance, more accepting of myself through their empowerment, and more open to life through their incredible curiosity and their welcoming smiles. These women have made my trip to India so enriching and beautiful, and I will be forever grateful to them.
Solitude Farm
Food has never tasted so good! I don’t think I ever fully appreciated what goes into a meal until I started working at Solitude. Solitude is an all-natural, organic farm that serves lunch five days a week for Aurovillians and guests. The meals, served on banana leaves, consist of the heartiest local grains, like varagu or samai, along with sambar, sautéed pumpkin and fresh salad. The food itself is incredibly healthy and tasty, but what makes it so delicious is having been a part of the whole process of creating the meal. From planting, mulching and weeding, to harvesting, cooking and serving, I was able to watch the seeds travel all the way from the soil to hungry mouths. Everything tastes so much better when you are really connected to what you are eating.
My favorite task at Solitude was making the salad, which is nothing like making salad at home, where I toss some pre-washed vegetables together with vinaigrette in less than 10 minutes. At Solitude making salad starts around 10 a.m. Other volunteers pick the tomatoes and lettuce while I forage barefoot for chicken spinach beneath the banana and papaya trees. Sometimes the sprinkler goes off while I’m collecting and I get a cool, refreshing shower. After I have a nice big bucket full of beautiful greens I sit down to pluck the leaves from their stems. I double wash everything with water from Solitude’s well and mix all the vegetables together for a beautiful salad with a simple salt, lemon and oil dressing. At 12:30 when the volunteers and workers come in from the fields and the guests arrive for lunch, you can really tell how much the food is appreciated. There is so much positive energy and love that goes into every part of the process, your taste buds can really tell.
-leigh
Our New Home: Naturellement
This semester, we worked at a food processing unit called Naturellement. The company was founded in 1990 by a Swedish Aurovillian, Martina Ljungquist, who wanted to make jams from fresh, natural ingredients and to give women from nearby Tamil villages a positive work environment. Now, Naturellement employs 21 women from these villages, all of whom have become our sister, aunties, and friends. Despite some language and cultural barriers, we have been able to share laughter, hugs, and LOTS of delicious food with these strong and beautiful women (Prabha, Kala, Punitha, Prema, Krishnaveni, Alamelu, Indra, Malar, Amsa, Agila, Chitra, Gomadi, Sathiya, Lakshmi, Velvizhi, Kanimozhi, Selvi, Addi, Pawn, Vasanthi, and Manjula). They have been one of our biggest supports during our recent time of crisis, giving us a safe place to come each morning and feel loved and cared for.
An average day for us at Naturellement started when we arrived around 9:30 AM. Often we would help in the kitchen or the bakery, doing all the prep work by hand – cleaning, pitting, and chopping plump dates for fruit cake and date chocolate; juicing sweetly acidic citrus fruits and slicing the rinds for marmalade and syrups; and deleafing sprigs of fragrant basil for pesto. Then we took tea with the ladies, smiling at jokes that we didn’t understand and sipping the sweetest, tastiest chai in India (Vasanthi’s, of course), sometimes eating slightly browned cookies (deemed unsellable, luckily for us!) and sometimes lying in the laps of our dear aunties. Usually we could fit in a bit of office work at some point in the morning, working on the company’s application for fair trade certification (IFAT), the text and design layout for the company’s upcoming website, and general office organization. We were kept busy until lunchtime, when we would enjoy a hearty, authentic Tamil meal centered on local, whole grains and veggies, provided by the company and prepared by the ladies. After lunch and perhaps a quick rest on the cool floor of the storeroom, we would finally say a “see you tomorrow” with frantic waving, and return to the rest of our Living Routes community only to bug our friends with countless stories about Martina and the women.
Working at Naturellement has renewed our hope in the business world; it now seems possible that commercial success, high-quality products, AND a strong healthy community can be balanced in one venture. We have learned that a people-over-profit model can and does work, and will take the inspiration from this lesson with us. However, deeper in our hearts, we will carry the even more transformative memory of a place of sweetness, warmth, and love, where syrups, smiles, and saris bound us with the amazing women (and Chandran, the facilities manager and lone man) of Naturellement.
-Beda & Maddie (aka the Naturellement princesses)
Living Routes Mourns the Loss of One of Our Students
It is with great sadness that we report that Katherine "Katie" Sherman, a member of Living Routes' spring 2008 India program, died last Thursday while studying abroad with us. Katie's unexpected death was neither due to any program-related activities, nor was it in any way associated with the site or country in which she was studying. Medical and police authorities have determined that there was no 'foul play' involved.
Katie, a University of Massachusetts Amherst junior from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, was in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program with a concentration in photography. We are devastated by the news and extend our heartfelt condolences to Katie's family and friends.
The week following was fully devoted to creating a support system for the students (and faculty and staff) in India, dealing with the many logistical details, and aiding Katie's family in any way we could. We have brought in two local psychologists, one of whom has worked as a crisis counselor with the Israeli Army. He has been working continuously with the whole student body, both individually and as a group, and with the faculty/staff. While of course there are diverse reactions to such an event, the students are being closely held, and seem to be dealing with their emotions and reactions in a healthy way. Katie's father and aunt flew to India for three days and there were many opportunities for sharing with the students. A memorial ceremony was conducted on Wednesday, March 26.
Executive Director Daniel Greenberg interrupted his site review of our Findhorn program and flew immediately to Auroville along with Katie's family representatives. He spent a week there supporting Katie's family and the students, leading an assessment and constructing a thorough understanding of the events.
All students have been given a free international calling plan to have regular contact with their loved ones. We have also set up a parent listserv for parents of all current Auroville students and are supporting them to the best of our abilities.
With Daniel's support, our faculty have restarted normal program activities. The semester was just entering the service learning portion of the program. Due to circumstances, there will likely be changes to the itinerary, but students will be able to complete the program.
Living Routes has run semester-length programs in Auroville, India, since our founding in 1999. The program is led by 4 resident faculty and assisted by 3 coordinators and several other facilitators. Each semester, the Auroville program has 2 cohorts of approximately 24 students.
Thank you for keeping Katie and her family in your thoughts and prayers. We will always remember her.
Image posted to the Auroville program's student blog by Katie on 2/24/2008
cutest
I used to think that Asian kids were the cutest (I put that prejudice down to genetics, being half-Japanese) but I think my recent inundation with such a high concentration of cute Indian kids may be swaying my thinking. Here are a couple pictures of what I'm talking about (and I haven't even taken pictures of the 40 three-year-olds I've been hanging out with at the daycare at Mohanam Cultural Centre!)
This little rascal was so excited about everything! Katie and I met him, his mom and sister on one of our first visits to the village. I don't remember his name, but I remember his excited energy, which I managed to capture totally accidentally in this shot.
This is Prethi (pronounced sort of like "Pretty") the daughter of Shanti, who works at the Kolam Project. This was taken while we were waiting for the festival that Shanti took me to to start.
food glorious food
Food is a pretty big thing here. It seems like we are always eating. Eating delicious, delicious food, might I add. And, when we're not eating lunch at one of the many yummy places in Auroville (or dinner cooked by our Tamil ammas at College Guest House) we're being invited into village homes and practically force-fed by the gracious and hospitable Tamil friends we have made at our different service learning placements.
Some images to whet your appetite...
The adorable Rachel (pre-haircut) at Indus Valley, a "gift-economy" restaurant that serves simple, delicious South Indian food at the Indian Pavilion in the International Zone of Auroville. (They also make what I consider the best chappatis in Auroville)
Deviki, a woman who works in the kitchen next to the Kolam Project, cooking breakfast on a mudstove in the village of Sanjeevi Nagar. She tried to feed me breakfast but I was already committed to eating at Shanti's. (This was a challenging interaction to navigate, as Deviki's English and my Tamil are at about the same level, and I'd already disappointed her once before when she thought I was coming over to eat, but I didn't even know she had invited me. We figured it out though. She made me tea.)
Deviki's spice tray. Yum.
Hungry?
so sari, oh so sari
Saris, saris everywhere.
These women are dressed up for a festival, but honestly, their saris are this colourful every single day. I think the reason they can wear such bright colours is because their dark skin balances it out. There is no colour that these women cannot wear. Really. Who do you know who can wear an entire outfit of bright peach and look absolutely killer? That's what I thought.
Tamil women also always smell amazing because they wear strings of flowers (poo) in their hair. At different times, women have offered them to me, and then laughed, because, since I buzzed my head, there is no hair to pin them.
I have also learned that some women wear saris "better" than other women - following the folding and tucking techniques more closely, or wrapping them with a precise attention to details. I, however, think they all look amazing, all the time, regardless of their tucking abilities.
Anandi
Beautiful Anandi. You opened my heart to India.
I came here expecting my heart to open. A beautiful and wise friend of mine, Michael, sighed deeply when I told him that I was going to India. "Your heart is going to open up there"¯ he said to me. "India is a country of great suffering. It will force you to grow, move, shift and open. Your heart is going to bloom, I know it."¯
I didn't want to come here with expectations. Everything that I knew about Auroville I tried to leave behind. But ideas about India were harder to shake. I'd read so much about its literature, history, culture. I was so excited to visit the place that had intrigued me most while I was growing up.
And when I got here, I really wanted to love it. I wanted to savour every second, breathe in every dusty lungful, let the sun seep into my skin and just adore this country.
But I didn't. I gave it a fair shot (I thought). But after more than a few weeks, I was so totally frustrated with the discomfort (both physical and emotional) that this place stirred up in me that I felt like I was going crazy. Granted, I am in an academic program that is extremely challenging in many areas, so I could have been feeling the stress from that. But nevertheless, I had kind of given up hope that I would fall in love with India. I wanted to go back to Indonesia, or Scotland, or Colombia, places where I'd felt crazy stirs of intense emotion the second I set foot on their soils.
I'd even accepted that I wouldn't love India. Which was hard for me, because it seems like everyone comes back from India a changed person, in love with the culture, the food or the Ganges . But I'd come to terms with the fact that maybe India just wasn't my jam. That was alright. There was always Bali.
And then... and then Anandi.
Anandi opened my heart to India. Unwittingly. Unintentionally. Just by her kindness. Just by her smile. Just by her beautiful heart.
Anandi (pronounced AH-nan-di, emphasis on the AH) is one of the women that I work with at the Kolam Project. She lives in Edayanchavady, one of the villages near Auroville, and she bikes into Auroville everyday to embroider kolam designs on purses, pouches, belts and backpacks. The Kolam Project is associated with the Mohanam Cultural Centre, my "official"¯ work placement. Profits from sales of the embroidered purses, backpacks, etc. will go to purchasing a women's house next to Mohanam Cultural Centre, in the village of Sanjeevi Nagar.
My work at the Kolam Project is around cultural appreciation and bridge-building between Auroville and the villages. Mohanam Cultural Centre was started by a group of youth, including my current mentor, Balu, and it runs programs to re-connect villagers to traditional Tamil culture through dance, martial arts and music. It also runs a women's group, to provide a space for the village women to gather and share their experiences, solve problems collectively and work together to empower themselves. It is this group that will benefit from the purchase of a women's house, that they will be able to create, maintain and use to their benefit.
The way that Katie and I (Katie is the other student working at the Kolam Project with me) are working to "build bridges"¯ between Auroville and the villages is to create a short documentary film about kolams, starring the women of the Kolam Project, in order to share with Aurovillians or other interested people the beauty and ritual and purpose of kolams. I really didn't know anything about kolams when I first started working on the project, but spending time with these women has turned this place around for me.
This past week I spent two mornings getting up ridiculously early (4 or 4:30 am) to bike to the nearby villages and film the women of the Kolam Project. Anandi on Wednesday morning, and Jayalakshmi and Shanti on Friday morning. By Wednesday 9 am I felt like a changed person. I had finally landed in India.
How did it happen? Well, I think a big part of it was being welcomed into the villages at such an intimate time of day. When we biked there it was still dark, and as we turned corners on our bikes, we got glimpses into the quiet stirrings of morning in a Tamil village. And for the first time, I didn't feel totally out of place. Often when I cycle through the villages, even the ones that I regularly go through to go to my service learning, I feel this strange tension at being a Westerner riding through. But early morning was totally different. It almost felt like the villagers I saw were much more relaxed about me being there, like, alright, you want be here? You got up early enough. Come on in.
Then there was being with Anandi as she went about her morning. Rising at 5:30 am, the first thing she did was go outside to prepare the cowdung water to splash around the front yard to purify the space. The rest of the tasks include sweeping, clearing away leaves and litter, and then settling down with a bowl of rice powder to draw on the damp ground the beautiful kolam patterns she knows by heart. I thought this was what was going to move me most but it wasn't. It came close, but the kolams weren't it.
What got me was her gentleness. Here I was, this privileged university student holding a video camera in her front yard, watching her cook breakfast in a mud hut. After starting a fire with sticks under a mud stove, all she could do was smile broadly at me and send her sister out to get milk and extra sugar so that she could make me a coffee. On top of heating water to bathe in, cook rice in, and hand grind peanuts and chilis on a stone board for the vegetable dish her mother was cooking for breakfast. Her presence astounded me. Her tenderness blinded me. Who was I? What was I doing here? What had I done to deserve such kindness?
Riding back from the village I felt so full I thought I was going to burst. My heart felt like it was rising up out of my body and flowing in waves in every direction. Being with Anandi had woken me up, finally, to the intense difference between our worlds. To the reality of India. To where the beauty and love for a place really lies. Being with her, eating rice cooked in water that she carried from a well, boiled on firewood she gathered on her day off, bought with money that she has been earning since her father died when she was nine and she had to go to work to support her family, I was floored. I was swimming in disbelief. At the total disparity in the world, and at her ability to reach across it and take my hand with genuine care and affection.
As I wrote in a previous post, I feel as if being here has initiated the deconstruction of my self. In my one hand, I am holding my life, my experiences up to this point, and trying to be here and see what I am seeing from my perspective. With my other hand, I am reaching out as far as I can to these women, meeting their gaze, holding their hands, and letting them affect me and laugh at me and welcome me into their world. I will never know what it is like to live in a Tamil village, but their kindness cuts across any life situation and simply asks that I be present to receive. I feel so blessed to know these women, to spend this time with them, and to carry them in my heart when I will leave this place. I have fallen in love with India. I have been shown the strength, courage and love it takes to live here. I am so lucky to be here, and this week I finally woke up to what it means to be grateful.
NEXT page |
