Thanks, Luciana!

 

That's Lu on the left.

Luciana’s an intern from Brazil, via Germany. She’s with SAATH as part of her master’s in Architecture and Planning.

Thanks, Luciana, for sharing lunches, for always being up for interesting things, for your bubbly personality. Thanks, also, for your generous contributions to the SAATH blog.   I will miss you.  Hope you’ll come back soon, or else that I’ll find a chance to visit Germany.

Ordinary People: Tsering, Tsering and Dilip

“Do you want to go to Tibetan slum food?” 

tibetan slum food

That was the question my friend Hari posed to me one January evening in Ahmedabad.  Yes, I did want to go to Tibetan slum food.  Just around the corner from the parking lot of Tagore Hall, there’s a jopadhpatti, a slum area near the Tibetan market for warm clothing.  The vendors come down to Ahmedabad each winter, leaving the snow-locked mountains in Ladakh, Leh and Darjeeling. And just inside this jopadhpatti is a proper dhaba.  Amdo, the dhaba, is run by three guys named Tsering,  Tsering and Dilip.  The place is popular among students from NID, whose campus is just across the main road.  In a way, it reminds me of certain grungy, underground places in Brooklyn that attract the same kind of starving artist rich kids and wannabe intellectuals.  Amdo [after one of the occupied provinces of Tibet] serves up a delicious selection of veg and non-veg noodle soups, momos, chow mein, rice and lemon tea.

Amdo owners Tsering2, Dilip, Tsering1

Tsering, Tsering and Dilip are kind of scruffy, interesting dudes. Tsering and Tsering are Tibetan. Dilip is from Darjeeling.  Tsering 1 came here about 13 years ago to work some odd jobs during the winter season.  He worked at tea stalls and eventually got together a kitchen, which became Amdo. Tsering 2 used to be in the Indian army. There’s a story to that as well, but you have to ask Hari or Tsering 2. The Tserings will go back to their families in Manali where they have a dhaba similar to Amdo that they run in the summer. During the winter, the two-room brick dhaba with its colorful murals and straw mats is their home as well as their work.

To have a taste of this Tibetan wonder, drop in to Amdo before February 4.  That’s when the Tserings and Dilip pack the kitchen for the summer.  They will be back to Ahmedabad in August.

Thanks, Aditi

Thanks this week to my fellow fellow, Aditi.  Aditi runs a women’s narrative group at The Banyan, a Chennai-based mental health NGO.  Aditi has also been instrumental in the preservation of my own mental health, as we learn to navigate a culture at once familiar and foreign.  Before arriving in Chennai, last year’s Chennai fellow Hamsa provided Aditi with a single piece of advice on a successful India experience: “Learn to be a huffy bitch.”  Ahh, but Aditi is so accomodating, so lovely that adjectives like “Nubienne” and nouns like “rose petal” have been used to describe her. 

"Eve-teasing" = Groping.

Indeed, Aditi struggled at first but has learned quickly to stand her ground.  Now, she does not think twice before thrusting the sharp point of an umbrella at “eve-teasing” men she encounters on the bus.  She bravely enters her kitchen when there are cockroaches.  And she never fails to tell it like it is. 

Darling, thank you for Skype-therapy, for entertaining stories about lice, and for holding me accountable to myself.

Ordinary People: Chris and Krishna

Earlier this month, I was in Mumbai and had the chance to check out Reality Tours’ tour of Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum. Through a mutual friend, I also had the privilege of meeting Chris and Krishna, the founders of Reality Tours and its affiliate charity, Reality Cares, which takes proceeds from the tour to fund educational initatives in Dharavi.  

Reality Cares founders, Chris and Krishna

Changing the perception of slums is one of the core objectives of the tours, and Chris and Krishna have done an incredible job bringing the community along in this endeavor.  Having led site visits into slum areas myself, I’m sensitive to how residents feel about outsiders in their neighborhoods.  Reality Tours has built its trust and credibility with the local community, making them partners.  Through conversations with Dharavi residents, the guys identified a need for kindergarten and school facilities.  In 2009, Reality Cares was set up and by July, they had opened their first kindergarten in Dharavi.  They’ve also set up a Community Centre where older students learn life skills, basic English and computers.

Click here to read more about Reality Cares’ education initiatives in Dharavi. 

If you’re in Mumbai, please check out this enlightening tour.  Reality Cares also sells post cards of images from Dharavi to support their educational initiatives so remember to pick up a box when you’re there.

Thanks, Timbhai & Bernardbhai

I was first introduced to the idea of Guardian Angels as a kindergartener at Notre Dame School.  My teacher, Mrs. Garrety, handed me a small goldish pin shaped like a pretty lady with wings.  “This is your Guardian Angel,” she said, fixing the lady to my jumper. “She will look after you.”

Coming to Ahmedabad was my first time away from home.  If ever I needed a guardian angel, it was during those first few weeks in this vaguely home-flavored, alien place.  During my fourth day-long excursion to the Foreign Registration Office, Bijal and I met Tim the Texan. I was amazed to watch Tim throw around ”Kem cho’s” and high-fives with the same civil servants who had systematically denied me and Bijal our papers for the past month. 

Tim & Bernard

We started talking to him and ended up with an invitation to play paint ball that weekend.  At paint ball, I met Bernard, Tim’s roommate.  Bernard’s striking appearance made it difficult to go anywhere without getting stared at. But instead of getting angry at people who followed him home to take camera-phone pictures of him, he engaged with them.  He asked their names and found out what they did.  He loved them. 

During those first few weeks, Tim and Bernard spent whole days with me alternately bitching with me about Ahmedabad and educating me about “my” culture.  The best piece of advice they gave me? “It takes about three months. Give it three months.”  Over that three months, they’ve introduced me to Luckybhai, the movies guy, King’s Tailors, Natarani Cafe, Bhargav the Broker, and countless others. Maybe meeting them was a housewarming present sent from heaven because they’re the reason Ahmedabad feels like home.

Tim’s gone to start an orphange in Tanzania, The Twiga Foundation.  Bernard and I still hang out in Ahmedabad, where he frequently distracts the guards at RelianceMart so I can sneak in without checking my backpack. 

With all my gratitude.

Ordinary People: The Bookseller

The Bookseller: Bharatbhai

One of my first activities in Ahmedabad was becoming a member of the British Library at Bhaikaka Bhavan for an annual fee of Rs. 1,300.  Shortly thereafter, I met Bharatbhai, the bookseller who sits just outside of the library from 6 pm to 12 am each night. 

Bharatbhai has been selling books to students, tourists and readers across Ahmedabad for the past 30 years.  He and his brother, Niteshbhai, sit on alternate nights.  They’ve inherited the business from their father who also sold books at a roadside stall in Ahmedabad.  His wife is a homemaker, and his son has studied to become a C.A. at Axis Bank.

Bharatbhai sells books and magazines in English, Gujarati and Hindi.   His selection is limited, but he takes orders for particular titles. The stock is a hodgepodge of current bestsellers and classics, with a large assortment of self-help and business strategy titles.  “I like positive books,” Bharatbhai says, “Because positive thoughts lead to good things.”  Usually photocopied, misnumbered and spuriously bound, the books run between Rs. 150 and Rs. 300.  He sells about 300 each month. 

When I asked him if reading had declined in recent years, Bharatbhai smiled and said, “Reading has gone up. More people are reading. It’s good for them.”  Well, yes. Yes, it is.

Thanks, Kiran.

I met Kiran in August 2005 at the FIAP Jean Monnet hostel in Paris.  I found out she was one of three people I’d be sharing a penthouse duplex with for the semester.  I didn’t know what to make of her at first. She was sweet, diffident, perpetually late, running from one relative to meet another as Indian people usually are.

I have always admired Kiran’s generosity and ability to love strangers. To give an example, I recently visited Kiran in Dubai.  We went on a desert safari, which includes 30 minutes of dune bashing in a 4×4. The four Americans in our 4×4 asked our driver to, “get all four wheels off the ground.” Kiran was so afraid of  dune bashing that the next day, her arm was sore from holding on too tight to the car.  Instead of hating our fellow travelers, Kiran made friends.

Kiran is so smart, and fierce! We went shopping in the gold souks and she tells the guy behind the counter, “Listen, I have a jewelry store. Don’t try to rip us off because I know what this costs!” 

Thanks, Kiran. Thanks for a lovely trip and for being a lovely friend.

New for 2010

This year, I want to focus on two things: awesome people and gratitude. I want to highlight the awesome people I meet in my work and travels, as well as do big, public thank you’s to people who have made a difference in my life.

to the ‘Gam

This weekend, I went to a gam, a small town outside of Ahmedabad.  This town, Viramgam, was the court city of King Viram [date unknown]. A former walled city, Viramgam features include a massive talav, or man-made lake, pols, a university and a railway station. The railway station marks the break between two branches of the Indian railways, the Kutch and Saurashtra lines.  So I guess it’s a junction.

My father’s sister married the town doctor [arranged] in the 1950s. My cousin is still the town doctor here, and so well known that when SAATH’s Viramgam staff came to Ahmedabad, they met me and said, “oh we found a relative!”

The environmental situation really struck me.  The talav had been drained last year, but this year  the rains were insufficient to refill it.  There goes the buffaloes’ bath water. There were open drains everywhere, and swimming in them, cranes. Beautiful, white cranes. Stinky, mucky sewage.

Often, I think of my work, and the ways the bottom of the pyramid are the first to feel the effects of pollution and climate change.  I’ve seen women trash-pickers seperate grades of plastic with a kind of surgical precision. Cut the tops off of bottles, they’re worth more. Bare hands pick through medical waste. Men buy newspapers from bungalows to re-sell to roadside vendors who use them as paper cones for street food. Rather than formal recycling, each item lives four or five lives before it either disintegrates or is burned.  I think of the waste I produce each day and how wrong it is.  

Here, I’m so upclose and personal with my trash. I dump it outside at night and the stray dogs and cows have a first  go at the organic matter. In the morning, the trashpicker comes to collect what’s salvageable. Then the trash guy burns the rest. I am so cognizant of the impact of each piece of waste on the surrounding air and soil quality. Everything that doesn’t biodegrade ends up in shreds around the society, including diapers, plastic bags, sanitary products. In this exclusive society, the rich live in their own filth.

Resolved,  2010: I will reduce trash. All organic matter in a reusable recepticle, no paper tissue, limited use of plastic bags, limited processed/packaged food.

And I’m continually surprised by way Americans in Ahmedabad maintain their consumption / waste levels here, sometimes filling two or three trash cans in a night. I don’t want to be/do that. So I’m going to live on the Indian side of my hyphenated identity and see how green I can be.

See AIF Fellow Behzad’s work on waste management in Patna: www.behzadlarry.com

I’m Gujarati

Glory of Gujarat textbook

Gujarati = Affluent

I’ve always wanted to open a flower shop, but never had the courage. Till this moment.

 

I've always wanted to open a flower shop, but never had the courage. Till this moment.