Hampi

I didn’t know so many people could fit into one bus. The Visthar mini bus holds 30 people, and after Ambryn and I climbed aboard and attempted to find the most stable standing position, we counted 74. Granted, most were girls, bust still. I rode most of the way pressed up against the door, while being spooned. Thankfully my spooner was a benign 11 year-old girl. We rode through the busy evening streets of Bangalore. I believe only one girl vomited, and I think we can call that a success. As I looked out the window (I felt lucky I wasn’t lodged somewhere in the middle) onto Hindu worshipers in the little roadside temples, men sitting in tea shops, and sides of mutton and pork hanging in the meat stalls, I felt like I was seeing India for the first time, in a sense. Somehow it felt more like India, this country with over one billion people, with humanity pressed into me, slogging our way through the loud, honking, gritty streets. As it turned out, I think Ambryn and I needed our weekend in Koppal to round out the relatively cozy experience we’ve been having so far.

It was delightful to take the train with the girls. At the station we entertained them with singing, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” etc. (It was actually a request.) We saw a few other white tourists at the station and one girl, Padma, turned to us, smiling excitedly and said, “Aunty! Same!” Ambryn and I cringed (at the reminder that because of white skin, we are immediately associated with all the scandalously clad Westerners backpacking their way around…), and allowed ourselves to continue to be pulled down the walkway with them. The girls were professionals on the train. Ambryn and I were lucky to share a berth with 4 of the smallest girls. One had no shoes and carried a heavy second-hand suitcase that was almost as big as her. The excitement wore off relatively quickly for them. They pulled down the make-shift second-class sleeper beds, covered themselves with a “dupatta” (large scarf) if they had one, used their suitcase or backpack for a pillow, and promptly went to sleep. I can’t get over how competent these little girls are. Ambryn tried to cover a few of them up with her blanket, but they would only immediately fold it neatly and hand it back to her.

After arriving at Koppal the next morning and taking our breakfast, we packed into two (thank God) mini buses and headed for Hampi. Hampi is the site of old temple ruins, the largest World Heritage Site. The day was long and hot, with all of the waiting around in the sun associated with group travel. It was also a beautiful gift to share that incredible place with those girls. They took turns playing tour guide for us and pulled us along the various ruins, pointing out different deities, “Aunty! Hanuman! Beautiful! Aunty!” At the living temple at Hampi they became very pious and serious. We all took the holy water, and received the red, yellow, and white powder (I always forget what they’re called!) on our foreheads. The girls bowed to the little chamber where the priest sleeps, which can be viewed from behind a gate. On the way out I gave Renuka a rupee so she could receive a blessing from the temple elephant. Upon handing over the rupee the elephant lowers its trunk onto the head of the rupee-giver.

After ice cream was consumed and sunburns (for Ambryn and me) were confirmed we boarded the buses for the two hour journey back to Koppal. Raju, the social studies teacher, picked some sugar cane from the window and passed it to all the children. They soon crashed from their sugar highs and Ambryn and I were left to giggle all the way home. We were crammed into the backmost seat, our legs wedged behind the behemoth rice pot in which our lunch was kept, with sleeping girls on each side of us. The heat of the day made us a little loopy as we processed a day of heat, hilarity (the usual Indian travel things), and deeper relationships with the girls (including moving to a place of being irritated, a necessary step in authentic relationships, I think). We nearly missed our death a few times, but that all comes with Indian travel. We were hot, sweaty, and probably had a few months taken from our lives due to the alarm caused by our reckless (read: just about standard) bus driver. But the overwhelming sense was that of extreme gratitude for the opportunity to spend a meaningful day with these inspiring girls.

More Daily Life

We’ve been doing well these last few weeks and days. A few weeks ago we attended a party at our friend Lyola’s. Her husband works in the “Lifestyle” section of the Bangalore newspaper and he’s quite in-the-know about all things social. (He’s also the president of the Karnataka Racing Pigeon Club and owns over 300 homing pigeons.) The humidity of the day finally broke right around the time we were scheduled to leave so we walked in the pouring rain and had to change into Lyola’s clothes up on arrival. Lyola is very small, so I ended up in a pair of her salwar pants, if you haven’t seen them, they’re quite indescribable…there are a million modest pleats around the hips and they taper tightly at the ankles, so much that they are difficult to slip over your feet. Her aunties served us hot chapattis, dal, paneer, and tea, and soon after the friends began to arrive. We had cocktails, listened to music, played with the children and generally had a really good time all the way until dinner was served at 2:30 in the morning. This group of friends has graciously welcomed us into their crowd and we've been hanging out with them every weekend since. It's very exciting to have a social life, and we've had a lot of fun.

We also went sari shopping with Mercy and later took our sarees to our friend Chrstina’s cousin’s for tailoring. To begin measuring we were fitted into skin-tight sari blouses (a top that exposes your entire stomach) and before we knew it we were being wrapped into colorful sarees, bangles were slid on to our arms, and Christina took the bindi off of her forehead and place it between my eyes. (Ambryn and I tried to explain the concept of giving someone the “shirt off your back” and how in India this may be the equivalent.) Then we were paraded down the road to her cousin’s house. In the course of an hour or so we drank two cups of tea and ate butter sandwiches, then were back in our clothes and deposited on the back of two motorcycles, and then into a rickshaw and on our way home.

Here we are with Christina, two of her sisters, and her cousin:

My Easter was decidedly more secular this year than previous years in Tacoma and Holden. (We went into the city on Saturday and I realized I had purchased a pink Easter kurta, my first Easter dress in many years. I hope this makes my mother happy.) There are certainly Christian churches here, but from what I've gathered they fall into dichotomous categories of extremely high and low church. There are Catholic and Anglican churches that are very formal (and "old fashioned") and then all other Christian churches fall into one category of "Protestant" and seem very much into rock bands and accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. We had a good and relaxing morning here at Visthar, said "Happy Easter" to everyone, and made our way to our friend Biju's. He and his wife Lincy prepared us an incredible Keralan fest. I love Kerala food. Here we are with their daughter Airene:

After lunch at Biju's we boarded a bus and headed to our friend Chrstina's for her family's Easter celebration. Their home is very warm and cozy and we were well taken care of by her family.

One last thing: Because of my bus driving experience at Holden, I've been so fascinated by Indian driver's abilities to back into incredibly tight spaces and (most of the time) avoid colliding into stray cows, herds of goats, bullock carts and pedestrians weaving between fast moving cars, bicycles, two-wheelers, and auto-rickshaws (I'm still excluding many categories of traffic). I think often of the days of passing fire engines on the Holden switchbacks during the evacuation, as we narrowly escape sideswiping lorries barreling down the road. I never would have imagined it, but I have been behind the wheel on a couple of occasions here. Our friend Christina drives a sweet little scooter and I told her I wanted a "non-scary" ride around Visthar, but she insisted that I drive it! However, I did find driving it to be scary. I didn't go far. I also drove the Visthar van down the road (within Visthar) a ways, but definitely don't want to take it outside of the gate.

Sangama

One of the perks of being at Visthar during the School of Peace is that we’ve been invited to attend some of their classes. Lat week we sat in on a session led by a local NGO, Sangama. “Sangama defends the human rights of sexual minorities and others who are oppressed due to their sexual preference and/or gender expression. Their aim is to bring sexuality, sexual preference, and gender identity into the realm of public discourse, and influence class, caste, gender and other human rights and social movements in India. They focus on working class, non-English speaking sexual minorities who otherwise have very little access to resources. Sangama believes in diversity and does not see the different sexual minorities as one monolithic uniform community. We recognize that they come from different classes, castes, genders, religions, languages, cultures, ethnicities, sexual identities, sexual orientations, and political backgrounds.”

Sangama was founded in 1999, and at that point there were groups for gay-identified people in Bangalore (the fifth largest city in India, 8 million people), but they almost exclusively served the upper-strata of society. Very few (if any) resources existed for the lower classes. Samgama began as one small center that focused on twenty-four hour crisis intervention for sexual minorities who had experienced a violation, whether from their home, school, workplace, etc. Their support base has multiplied over the last nine years and they now have offices in Mysore, Chennai (Madras), Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Calicut, Cochin and Gujurat. They employ over 160 people.

It was inspiring, to say the least, to hear the stories from five of the members of this group, who all identified differently. They had all faced persecution because of their identity. Currently, they all work for Sangama as community organizers. From their stories we learned that so often people (somehow) hear that there is a place for people like them, and they find Samgama. After just one phone call they learn that there is community waiting for them.

When we were here as students in 2001 one of our classmates did her research paper on sexual minorities in India, and she was not able to visit this group because at that time it was not safe for them to allow “outsiders” in. It is fabulous to see that after six and a half years Sangama is able to celebrate International Women’s Day on the busiest intersection in the city, and is well-regarded by the NGO community. They are extremely well-networked and are able to mobilize 4,000-5,000 people for protests or events for Dalit women, garment workers, etc.

If you are interested, you can check out their website at www.sangama.org.

Grace

Last night, while Ambryn and I were nestled in our respective beds, covered with our respective mosquito nets, our conversation turned toward grace. I realized that the title of this blog is “From Holden to India” and that in the last days what I have taken from Holden has been emerging in my thoughts and conversations.

As I may have noted earlier, it has been interesting for both Ambryn and I to experience Visthar as an agency and as a workplace, rather than simply an idyllic place in which to learn. Because we have both worked in the non-profit sector post-graduation, we frequently find ourselves analyzing what we love, and what is hard, about working at Visthar. I am thinking a lot about “not taking oneself too seriously”, about the importance of celebration (something both Holden and Visthar do with gusto) and about different leadership models. I am deeply inspired by David’s moving homilies over tea, and Mercy’s ability to laugh at herself throughout the day, and I miss Paul, Carol and Tom’s quiet confidence in me, their affirmation, and their forgiveness. I miss hilarity.

Since I’ve left Holden, I’ve been thinking and speaking about graciousness. Last night I was telling Ambryn the story of the night I spilled diesel (from my bus's tank) from the diesel tanks, to the garage, and back into the village after an exhausting day (and after a few exhausting weeks) of driving and staff coordinating during the evacuation. While everyone else was walking home from Vespers I stepped out of my bus and saw the spill. My heart sunk into my stomach and I immediately felt tremendous guilt. I held the walkie-talkie to my mouth and said, “Marc, Bethany.” Marc replied, “Go ahead, Bethany.” I said, “Marc, can you meet me in the road?” He soon came outside and I quickly explained what had happened, apologizing every other word. What followed from Marc was one of the clearest examples of “graciousness” I have ever experienced. Marc and I walked the trail of the spill, and all the while he stressed that it would be okay, that it wasn’t that awful of a thing, and that the clean-up involved would be quite simple.

Ambryn and I have spoken a lot about our shared belief in the importance of creating space in which people can be vulnerable, and treating them kindly when they’re there. It’s so simple, and it can be rare. Last night I found myself talking about not just graciousness, but grace…about the ability to forgive, about not having to prove, not having to justify, not having to atone. And I think of Mary Oliver’s lines from Wild Geese, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on...”

And then I miss giggling while doing the “resting face” with Daniel, and I miss the tea area, and I miss singing Vespers ’86. I can’t take these specific pieces of Holden with me, but I can take what I learned, and then dance with both the Bandhavi girls and administrative staff of Visthar.

International Women's Day: Visthar

On Monday we celebrated International Women's Day and we basically danced all day.

The week before, Rhati, who is the "house mother" to the Bandhavi girls told us she'd lend us saris to wear for the day. After breakfast (And I have to add that Ambryn and I woke up at 6:00, took a walk, showered and relaxed before breakfast...I'm really proud.) Rhati wrapped and pinned us into our saris-of-choice. In the morning we worked on our "American women's" presentation (an Alice Walker reading with some interpretive dance, translation, and repetition) and the festivities began at lunch time. We all ate with the girls in their festive quarters. They had been working ALL weekend (we felt quite lazy in comparison) preparing. After lunch we gathered with some drummers and some neighbors for a processional around the campus. We stopped at different places and DANCED. The purpose of the processional was to remind us of our connection to the earth. We stopped at the deep, dry well (decorated with palm fronds, oil lamps, flowers...) and we all scattered nine varieties of seeds, drank water in leaf cups (water from the dry well...from death, life), and watched the girls perform more songs and dances.

We then gathered in the open air alla for the program and then we REALLY danced. The girls said to Ambryn, "Auntie! Red!" because her face was all hot and sweaty. She had to try to explain that this happens to white people! (And if you know Ambryn, you know she dances hard.) We danced in our bare or flip-flopped feet, kicking up dust and emulating their cool moves, but those girls put us to shame. They had ceaseless energy, and when it was all over (a long while later) they served us all tea, pekoras, and biscuits. We feel quite lucky that an afternoon of "work" could be spent in such meaningful activities (these girls are so wise...so dedicated...so revolutionary) and that we danced with such wild abandon (in saris!) with a wide group of phenomenal people.

Check out this guy's moves!

Happy International Women's Day! As we learned from the girls, "Women's liberation is human liberation!"

International Women's Day: Bangalore OR W-w-w-weekend

On Saturday Ambryn and I celebrated International Women’s Day in Bangalore, one of three IWD events we’ll take part in this month. We gathered with Bangalore’s “Women in Black” for a vigil near Mahatma Gandhi Park on Mahatma Gandhi (M..G.) Road. Every major city in India has an “M.G. Road” and in Bangalore it defines “downtown.” For one hour during dusk, we gathered on this busy street with women and men dressed in black and held paper lanterns and signs with messages of peace.

Most signs called for peace through an end to religious fundamentalism (whether Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity). Across the street a sexual minorities group (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, hijas, sex-workers...) was also honoring International Women’s Day with colorful streamers, masks, dancing, drums. They were celebrating their success in being recognized as being a part of the women’s movement. Six and a half years ago I never would’ve believed this would be possible. It was very inspiring.

We were also celebrating our two-week anniversary in India. We went into Bangalore in the morning and had a beautiful lunch after successfully changing money. Then we explored Bangalore, trying to recall the city map (our very small portion of the city as it were) that was buried in our minds somewhere.

After the vigil we hopped onto the Visthar bus with the school of peace students, a group of young and energetic Catholic sisters and were dropped off at place where we could make our way to a family birthday party at Christina’s. Christina works in the finance office at Visthar, and on one of our first days here she invited us to this party. Her family gathers once a month to celebrate birthdays. After a few transit-related fiascos (involving an auto-rickshaw driver who didn’t know where he was going and kindly men at a petrol station) we arrived at Christina’s house at after 10:00. We were greeted by several boisterous family members, received a blessing with flames and tikas on our foreheads and were handed heaping plates of really good Kashmiri food. We ate, danced (a lot) and after receiving hugs and kisses from many family members we were back in their jeep and delivered at the Visthar gate around 12:00.

Here's Christina's wild and welcoming family:

Whether it was while enjoying Kingfishers with our Keralan lunch in downtown Bangalore, watching a horse galloping through the busiest intersection of the city, sipping mango lassis while listening to American hip-hop booming through speakers, vigiling with Bangalore activists, waiting for a rescue motor cycle in a remote petrol station at 10:00 at night, or being hugged and kissed good-bye by strangers after dancing in their living room, the theme of our really good weekend was, "How did we get here?"

Gender, Conflict and Disaster in South Asia

Preparation:
Since we began our internship at Visthar, Ambryn and I have mostly been engaged with preparing for the Gender, Conflict and Disaster in South Asia Conference that Visthar hosted March 4th-6th. We've mostly been delighted to find ourselves in the midst of this NGO, with all of it's quirks and beauty. We've especially bonded with Mercy, the associate director, a champion of gender issues in India, (with global recognition) and Lyola, in publications, a woman close to our age whom we've quickly identified as our friend. (We're keeping a list of characteristics of Mercy's life so we can aspire to emulate her fabulousness some day.) Along with these women we've condensed research on the 2005 Tsunami, Nepalese floods, and armed conflicts in various Indian states. We've made hundreds of copies. We've run around this campus with somewhat elusive tasks. And, we've found ourselves frustrated by the difficulty of communication due to cultural and language barriers. It was probably on Friday that I said, "I'm definitely out of the 'euphoria' phase of the culture shock wheel." That said, we've smiled and laughed a lot at the the situation we've found ourselves in. Five years after planning several events a year for the Womyn's Awareness Center (with many other phenomonal women and men) we find ourselves working side by side again, and most of the difficulties we've run in to are ones we've faced before. Though at the end of a too-long day we don't find ourselves sprawled out on the comfortable couches in the dearly beloved womyn's awareness center (wac) trying to find the place on campus with a free meal (or at least caf' cookies). Instead, we sit in our mosquito netting and wait for the chapatis and pineapple that will come with dinner in the open air.


Day One:
After a day of asking a lot of clarifying questions (to which Mercy would respond, "Questions are good. Questions bring about change.") our participants began to arrive. Ambryn and I were equipped with several lists, keys, ledgers, and the responsibility of seeing to it that our guests were happy. The first to arrive was our keynote speaker, a woman from a U.N. affiliate (UNFPA), Indian but stationed in Kathmandu, with decades of experience and impressive credentials. Her fanciness was immediately detected by Ambryn and me. It was clear that this sort of engagement is not usual for her, but she believes in the importance of remaining connected to the people in the field. She said she was embarrassed by how long it has been since she has been to a conference of this sort. She was a bit flustered by the mosquitos, the open air dining room, and our remote location (which feels far from remote to me...coming from Holden Village)...but she rolled with it graciously. Conversation with her was very stimulating and she was very kind. Ambryn and I found ourselves running all over making some arrangements for her (while welcoming and registering other guests), and marveled that here we were, doing some bidding for a U.N. official.

Today progressed rather smoothly. The key-note address was amazing. I feel very affirmed in pursuing my MSW and continuing down that path. I feel very lucky to be surrounded by women and men doing such important work. There is a senior official from the Afghanistan Department of Health, who wears a suit and tie, and laid-back non-profit field workers, all throwing their ideas around together. It felt good to be back in a classroom. It felt good to be theorizing about gender. It's interesting to note what is similar and what is different from our women's studies education at Gustavus. We sit in the back of the room trying to catch as much as we possibly can in our "documenting" role, and put out small fires (in the figurative sense) during the tea breaks.

Here's us at our post:

Day Two:

Today Ambryn and I struggled with our role as "documenters." We're responsible for catching as much of this conference as possible, collecting the power point presentations from various presenters, and compiling all of our information so it can be published on the web and used for a future manual publication. The conference content is very interesting, but the days are long and hot as we frantically type everything we can possibly catch (some of it presented in rapid-fire Indian English or translated from Tamil, Kannada, etc.).

This afternoon I was asked to help a senior Afghani Bureaucrat (a physican from the department of health) to transcribe his notes and create a power point presentation. He was very gracious and thanked me often, but still, I felt like I had taken a step back into time...a time when it was okay to ask a young woman to do your typing! But, how many days of my life will I have done such a task? Not many, so in the words of many Indians ,(with a head bobble) "It's okay."

Here we are:

We shared our desk with Kiran, the woman from UNFPA, today. She continually amazes me with her stories and references. Rarely in my life have I met someone with so much class. She exudes professionalism. I feel very honored to be in her presence and hearing her editorial comments throughout the conference. Also, I think I feel a little better knowing people like her are doing what they can to make positive change in the world.

Ambryn was charged with creating a "dance session" this evening. We had very little time to prepare. Ambryn was ready with some "body mapping" ideas...but when we arrived in our space it was quite apparent that everyone else had a different kind of dance experience in mind. People sang different Indian songs (from all over the country) while we danced in a circle. We shared dances from our cultures...which means that Ambryn and I found ourselves screaming, "Roll out the barrels, we'll have a barrel of fun!" while we polkaed around the room, trying to teach the Indians this piece of our rural Minnesota culture. Eventually a funcitioning computer with some speakers arrived (Ambryn and I are not equipped with such technology, much to the chagrin of our participants) and we all settled into dancing to Bollywood soundtracks. It was fabulous. Dances that were also present: The hokey pokey, the chicken dance, the macarena, some Indian hippie 60s trans-esque dancing (from when all the hippies came overland in their VW buses from Europe), disco, Punjapi gyrating, coy traditional female moves, the worm...People that were referenced: John Travolta, M.C. Hammer, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Shakira, Enrique Iglesias. Who knew the hokey pokey crossed so many national borders?

After we pulled ourselves off the dance floor and into the dining hall, and consumed much watermelon, Anthony (one of the participants) told us that he and his wife sing to each other on the phone. (Anthony proved himself to be quite the vocalist at the dance.) The next thing we knew he was on his mobile, then held it out so we could hear his wife's sweet singing! It was quite precious. There are a lot of really wonderful people here. I regret that we've been so busy and I haven't been able to spend as much time socializing as I'd like. (Consequently, I'm not surprised Anthony is from Calcutta, where the Benalese people hale. The Bengals are famous for their appreciate of art, music, dance, theatre. It is clear to many Indians that the city of Calcutta is such an infrastructural mess because people don't have time for things like road building when they could be discussing something beautiful. Interesting, huh?)

Day Three:

I'm currently feeling the calm that spread through one's body after completing a long anticipated task (though it hasn't been long anticipated at all, actually). There were some trying moments of this conference, but I walked away from it feeling incredibly honored to share that space with such inspiring people. It was humbling. Granted, we still have lots of editing and merging of our documentation ahead of us, but for tonight, we can relax. The final minutes of the conference were very joyous. We had heard each other's powerful stories, learned so much, and made connections with people from all over the world. Ambryn and I will meet up with two incredible women, Neha and Usha, youth workers in Delhi (one of whom is applying to law school in the states) later in our trip, and perhaps they will even travel with us. I spent some of last evening viewing photos of the very traditional Indian wedding of Mayank's brother. Mayank will be best remembered by me for his stellar Punjabi dance moves. And, I have contact information from people from all over...from UN dignitaries to NGO workers who will house us during our travels.

Here's us with the Afghani Bureaucrat. He requested a photo taking session with us. He was very sweet: