Madeleine’s Travel Blog

March 13, 2008 - Kolkata, India

Four years ago, Faisal, a fellow-filmmaker and friend of mine, left Vancouver to go to Bangladesh and India to shoot a documentary on sweatshop labour. This year he was invited to screen it in Bangladesh, and then was interested in coming to India again as well. We ended up being able to meet in Kolkata for 4 out of our 5 nights there. Pretty nice timing, but for the fact that we missed out on the Tiger Safari we’d all been interested in doing… Another time.
What Evy & I particularly enjoyed (besides the obvious fun in meeting with friends while in completely different situations) was that by having an Indian-looking (even if not Hindi or Bengali speaking) male escort we had license to do much more in the city than we can normally. It’s hard to explain without experiencing it as a young Caucasian female yourself. The harassment can be beyond bearable sometimes, constant and unwavering. At first the ‘hello, Madam’s’ are a sort of amusing by-play, but there are times, such as when the small dirty beggar children follow you for city block after city block, pulling on all available clothing and bags, while vendors keep calling at you from all sides, that it becomes too much. As for going out at night on your own, forget about it. Somehow the descent of night seems to signal the end of restrained unwavering staring, and the posses of males from what seem to be age 12 up roam the streets without apparent restriction. Lewd stares & calls abound. For the most part I’m sure they’re harmless, but there tends to be a constant feeling of threat. It can be very uncomfortable, and very potentially, at least according to our numerous kind hosts & hostesses here, dangerous. It was thus a blissful break for us to lose our two-lone-white-girls status for a couple of days in Kolkata.
By day, Faisal was assumed by outsiders to be our guide(!). This meant that nearly all conversation and harassment was directed to him. This was perhaps not stellar for him, but it was a welcome relief for us. It was particularly amusing when people would ask Faisal questions about us, in English, while we stood right there with him. Evy’s favourite was when a guy came up to us and asked Faisal whether or not we liked Indian food. Faisal turned to us-
‘Do you guys like Indian food?’
‘Yup’.
He turned back to the guy- ‘Yeah, they like Indian food’.
It was pretty funny.

At night it was a slightly different scenario. As soon as it was dark out it (no longer tourist time?!) it was assumed that we were Faisal’s escorts. This, in local outsiders’ eyes, raised him up in esteem dramatically, and also meant that none of us were accosted. Pretty sweet deal.

On our last two nights we decided to take advantage of this license to go out at night.

Night One.
We thought we’d go to a local bar, just out for a drink. Surprising how long it’s been since any of us had done that (Faisal because no one drinks publicly in Bangladesh, and us due to the aforementioned circumstances). We meandered out of our hotel. Hotel Maria was our current residence, the lack of functioning plumbing and grimy walls & sheets having spurred a move from the Times Guest House.
Nowhere was open. Everything was closed. We asked at a hotel nearby and they, along with the odd person we met along the way afterward, recommended we go down the street to the hotel VIP International Club. Several other similarly named joints later (Hotel International VIP, Hotel VIP International Lounge, etc) we arrived.
Faisal got in, got efficiently frisked. I got stopped due to my ever-present camera. ‘I promise I won’t take any photos’. No go. They decide to call in someone else to explain it to me, whether it’s someone that speaks better English or the manager I’m not sure. Either way, four large guys, one particularly beefy with immense rings all over his fingers (brass-knuckle like? I don’t even really know what brass knuckles would look like but I would not want to be punched by that hand) appeared. Remember that in India, on average, I look over everyone’s heads. These guys were big, even by North American standards. And they had all apparently come to explain that I’m not allowed, under any circumstances, to bring my camera in. Ok, ok.
We leave our cameras with a little tag at the front, something I avoid at all possible times, not really trusting in their ‘security’ (often the security guard goes for a break/smoke/whatever leaving the stuff unsupervised behind him). In this case there didn’t seem to be much option though, and there definitely appeared to be security. We went in.
The décor felt fairly new, frosted glass accents with blue lighting, not dissimilar to what you’d find at a night lounge in Vancouver. As for the rest, well that’s another story.
To begin with, we were the only females in the audience. We were ushered to a VIP section (from which they unceremoniously kicked some guy out of) and immediately given menus. Fairly pricey, for India, typical pricing for Canadian liquor. There were a couple of tables in front of us, maybe 8 to 10 in the room in total, with 4 to 6 guys around each. At the front, maybe 25 feet from us, was the stage upon which a guy had been singing since we’d entered. Hindi Karaoke? We ordered some drinks and sat back to take in more details. The place, though small, was fairly well filled, with a number of guys standing against the wall looking at the stage.
The only other females in the room were four girls sitting, somewhat uncomfortably, behind the singer. ‘Made-up to the nines’ could be a description of their faces, as for their outfits –1 leopard print spandex halter dress, just beyond knee-length; 1 ‘skanky’ green cotton tank top layered over a ‘skanky’ yellow cotton tank top (thus rendering it altogether un-skanky by our standards) with jeans; 1 shimmery, ‘scandalous’, practically see-through blue sari , and, crème de la crème, scandal of all scandals, 1 tight black mini dress, no, not on it’s own, but covered by a floor-length fishnet sac dress… In North America, fashion police would hopefully have been called out, but here it appears it was the ultimate of sexy.
Shortly after we’d taken all this in, the girls came up and started to sing. Still had the feeling of karaoke, but this is when the real action began - out came the wallets. Bill after bill was thrust in the air & handed by the audience to the original male singer, now posted between audience and singers and evidently the delivery boy of money to the girls. Undercurrents swirled as some girls got more money than others, and evil looks were passed around. Men who paid more money would get more personalized singing than men who didn’t. Were we partaking in a little underground prostitution? We weren’t sure. We called for more drinks. ‘I’m sorry sir, we stop serving alcohol at 11:30pm, state law.’ Damn. We stayed a little longer, through the odd Hindi song and what appeared to be the favourites – Celine Dion, and Shaggy. I can’t recall what the Shaggy song was, but that fishnet-clad temptress on the stage did what must have been considered some very lewd moves by the crowd there, ‘cause the cash was flowing. Hands waved in the air, not with Rs10 bills as I’d originally assumed, but Rs50, Rs100, and wads of them…
Sans drinks the novelty wore off a little more quickly than it might have otherwise, so eventually we left them to it and decided to try a Lonely Planet suggestion for the following night. Our cameras returned to us, we were made to wait inside the entrance behind the security gate until the cop had walked by, and then were discreetly ushered out…

Night 2.

One of Lonely Planet’s recommendations was the Tantra nightclub. It was a Thursday night, everything in Kolkata apparently closes at midnight on Thursday’s, so we didn’t feel we could do much bar hopping – or at least that’s what we believed when we began the evening.

We arrived at Tantra, the recommended club. It seemed suspiciously quiet. They let us in, to check it out. If there’d been people there, it would’ve been a pretty sweet nightclub. But there weren’t. ‘Is there anywhere else around?’ we asked, not willing to pay the expensive cover for a club with no people and expensive drinks. It turned out there were at least 3 other options, all within the hotel building itself. We decided to check them all out. {The only reason I feel moved to describe this in detail is because it was such a weird combination of places, all in the same hotel…}

First stop, downstairs bar. Very small place, decent vibe, jam packed. Live cover singing of U2, Coldplay, etc. Nowhere to sit, so we decide to keep it as a later alternative, set-like though it feels with its painted brick walls and bland décor.

Next stop, lounge. Swanky décor, elegantly dressed people, over-the-top priced drinks. We leave.

Upstairs there’s apparently a place with an open bar. We decide to check it out. All men, music coming from behind closed doors. We go in. There’s a Caucasian girl in a skimpy black leather outfit doing a dance on stage. How do we find these functions?! From the numerous refrigerators lined against one ballroom wall, and the numerous logo-bearing signs, it appears we’ve walked into a refrigerator company convention. Some of these upstanding employees (all sans-wives/significant others) are capturing the dance with their cell-phones’ video function.
A lot of the men are standing so we appropriate some seats for ourselves. A guy comes on stage, announcing that, as exciting as that was, how would we like a similar dance with an Indian girl?! It appears we would. Out comes an Indian girl in a scandalous Indian inspired red outfit, complete with two male backup dancers. Servers come by with food and drinks on platters. Apparently it is open bar. We’re surprised we were told to come here by the hotel, to what to all eyes appears to be a private function. The drinks turn out to be extremely watered down whiskey. Not stellar, but with free alcohol who’s complaining?! We end up departing the function when the dance show is followed with some Hindi stand-up comedy – not quite our thing.
Next stop is Aquabar. This only because we catch the sign on our way back down the stairs, it hadn’t been mentioned in our original additional options. This bar is pretty sweet though. Poolside - bar with small terrace on one end, and then lining the length are large white-canopied privacy tents (with cushions and low tables inside, presumably for romantic drinks à deux, or simply a more private ambiance for groups of 3 to 6. The quiet couples here and there make the place feel ultra-high end rather than empty, and it seems very pleasant to be able to sit on the terrace by the bar. So we do. We decline the pitcher of beer (most expensive pitcher I’ve ever seen – equivalent of $70. $70 for one pitcher… crazy!), but found some more reasonable options. An enjoyable time is spent feeling successfully wealthy here.
Post relaxing poolside drink we check out the open bar (still Hindi talking) and then Tantra again – still empty despite all claims that it would fill up. We spend the rest of the evening reliving high school angst with the covers of Oasis etc. at the downstairs set-like bar. Altogether a truly enjoyable evening.

March 10, 2008 – Kolkata, India

We were recommended to leave the apartment at 5:30am this morning, by the latest 6am, in order to get to the airport in time for our flight.
5:27am - my vibrating but non-ringing phone succeeds in semi-waking me up. I wonder briefly if it has been ‘ringing’ since 5am, our original wake up time. We attempt to jump into gear, but are foiled a little by a sudden lack of power. No lights, no sunshine, a fair amount of our stuff spread out through the two-storey penthouse (reason being that we’d been drying laundry that hadn’t successfully done so the day before). Rush rush. All by flashlight. Priorities are established - toothbrushing is deemed to need the sole flashlight less than the missing article searching.
6:45am, 45 minutes later than the latest suggested time - finally we’re out the door, thank-you postcard of Vancouver written and key successfully placed within a waterbottle so the guard doesn’t realize what we’re putting him in charge of (our ingenious(?!) solution to preventing Rajeev, penthouse owner extraordinaire, currently staying with his in-laws, from having to meet us at this ungodly hour).
Our flight to Chennai is uninteresting but for a companion we meet on the bus from the airplane to the Chennai Arrivals terminal – none other than stranger lady from two days before. Weird. She said that she’d been meeting her son there because the van had broken down or something. Don’t know what to believe at this point. We smile politely and get our bags off the baggage track (one of the perks of arriving super late & not missing your flight is that your baggage ends up coming off first!).

March 8, 2008 – Kerala, India
Trivandrum

There was a lovely woman at our school, named, much like the school, Shanti (Peace). She was known to most, however, as Shanti J., J being short for her rather confusingly long last name. Shanti J. very kindly helped us arrange our stay in the southern state of Kerala, and eventually even organized what turned out to be a 5-star stay at her son Rajeev’s penthouse apartment in the city of Trivandrum, where we would be flying from in two days time to Kolkata. Kindness from others should not beget stupidity, but in this case I think somehow living in this lap of luxury must have dulled some of our senses. I have no other reasonable explanation.

Day 1 – Trivandrum

I was feeling tired, sweaty and gross. We’d just missed getting into the famous art gallery, and then once again had gone through a major bank debacle trying to find a bank that would realize our debit/credit cards are not ‘invalid’. Fortunately for us, the supermarket attendant had remembered that there was an Induslnd (one of the two banks we now know that actually work for us) about 10 blocks away. At the time he’d just gestured down the street however, we didn’t realize it would be quite such a long walk.
Eventually we’d reached the bank, got some money (vast quantities of Rs100 ($3) bills because it was out of Rs500 bills), and crossed the street in order to catch a rickshaw to the restaurant recommended to us by Shanti’s son.
Several minutes into the humidly sticky, impatient rickshaw wait (they’re always there when you don’t need one, never there when you do!) a rickshaw that had driven by us turned around and came back. It already contained a middle-aged Indian woman. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked. ‘Canada’, we replied. ‘Where are you going?’. We told her the name of the restaurant. ‘Hop in’ she said, ‘we’ll drop you off along the way.’ Evy, taking her word for it, got in. I had a mental image of the newspaper article I’d just read about tourists never being supposed to go into rickshaws or taxis containing more than just the driver, but Evy was already in and seemed ok with it so I jumped in as well. Lemming 1 and Lemming 2.
The stranger lady seemed very nice, asking us about where we were from, what we’ve been studying, etc.. Evy was chatting with her – I, on the other hand, had been mentally freaking out from the minute I’d entered the rickshaw. ‘Don’t look so worried’ said the woman, ‘I’m not crazy’. I smiled politely and ran through the various options of extricating ourselves from this mess, if it was indeed a mess, which my flight or fight instinct was telling me, rightly or wrongly, that it was. Meanwhile, the woman was suggesting a restaurant she knew as being much better than the one we’d been planning on going to. ‘I’ll take you out for dinner’ she said, ‘I can drive you back in my van’. At this point, under cover of a particularly bumpy section of road, Ev asks me in German whether I think this is all a little odd. ‘Yes’ is my emphatic answer, as the rickshaw drives into a less and less populated area.
My current ‘brilliant’ plan is to leap from the rickshaw the moment it looks like we’re heading into no-man’s land. Or, if the woman is legit and we actually get brought to a restaurant, then we eat with her and head off on our own, no big deal. We seem to be slowing down though. We pull up next to a very dark, little-populated area with some parked cars. ‘Here’s my van’, says the woman in English (she’d been talking with the rickshaw driver in some language we didn’t understand). Sure enough, we’ve pulled up next to an old style van. The window rolls down, there’s a guy sitting in the driver’s seat. He looks at us and smiles – in another situation perhaps he would’ve seemed young & harmless. In this case Evy and I agree that there’s no way in hell we’re getting into that van. The woman pays off the rickshaw driver. ‘We’ll just go now’ we say. ‘No, no, come into the van, we’ll go for dinner.’ We refuse, insistently. The woman gives in, saying something about meeting us at the ‘canteen’ (a commonly used term here for café/restaurant). We get back into the rickshaw. The rickshaw driver gives the woman some money back. I can’t help but wonder if she gave him extra money to keep quiet about the whole situation, but that now we’re going back with him he’s giving it back. Maybe that’s just paranoid. He takes us to the restaurant we’d originally wanted (involving major backtracking) and completely overcharges us. We’re just relieved to be in familiar territory again. We wait outside the restaurant for 5 minutes, no sign of the lady. Does that prove her innocent or guilty?
Our meal is tasty, especially spiced as it is with the remainders of adrenaline rush.

March 6, 2008 – Kerala, India
Amritapuri Ashram

Yesterday a wannabe exotic resort on a lake, today an Ashram.
The hostel we’d booked for yesterday evening sounded good. It was a little expensive, Rs 399 (approx. $12) per person rather than the half-price or less that some of the other hostels charge. We were in a rush in Hosur at the time though, and just wanted to have something booked for when we arrived, so book it we did.
In order to get there, the autorickshaw driver was to take you to a certain Jetty, not the typical boat jetty. Of course, the rickshaw driver had no idea what we were talking about. Then, when he finally agreed to drive us (after several conflicting directions from helpful nearby resort owners), we stopped 2 minutes into the trip to get gas, for which the driver wanted some money right off the bat. This is highly unusual, or at least we’d never experienced it before, so we were a little worried. When we were dropped off in front of a tiny ‘grocery’ store we were even more confused. The rickshaw driver, fortunately for us, was kinder than our paranoia had led us to believe (everyone tells you not to trust rickshaw drivers) and called the phone number we had listed for the resort. Apparently they were sending a boat to pick us up.
Sure enough, half an hour or so later, this boat (the word pirogue comes to mind but I don’t know if that’s exactly what it was – a sort of large wooden canoe (with a little outboard motor, no pole driving!) comes to take us to the hostel. 10 minutes boat ride along the backwaters later, we see what looks like an exotic resort sitting in the middle of a landspit. Pretty sweet hostel.
As we step off the boat, we are greeted by the manager. We are also immediately supplied with complimentary welcome drinks - a definite hostel first. Evy’s drink has a fly drowning in it, but mine is quite tasty. What the drinks don’t do is hide the fact that we appear to be the only current guests at this hostel. The manager then tries to tell us that we have to pay more than what we’d reserved through the hostelworld site, because apparently hostelworld had the wrong prices. We figured that wasn’t really our problem but his, and told him so. Ev & Mad with attitude. It’s a lot easier to stand up for your rightful room price when it’s still daylight out and you could always go somewhere else.
Our stay at the ‘resort’ is somewhat marred by this immediate implied favour of having the old room prices, but barring that it’s pretty neat. The hostel has a beautiful location, situated as it is right between the backwaters and the rice paddies. We’re particularly pleased we didn’t splurge for a double-room, as we have the whole 8-bed dorm to ourselves. We decide that that’s really their biggest problem – they’re trying to attract a hostel crowd, but with prices above typical hostel prices your hostel crowd isn’t interested unless the room quality is higher. Yes it’s a superb location with loads of activity opportunities, but in Evy’s and my case, for instance, we’d far rather pay half-price and have our own room than pay twice what we normally pay for a private room in order to sleep in an 8-bed dorm - simple backpacker thinking. Either way, we’ve dealt with cost issues & now bring our backpacks up to settle in.
In the early evening the manager’s assistant, a friendly guy of about 16 or 17, comes by our room and asks us what we’d like for dinner. We give him an order, he tells us he’ll be gone for the next 20 minutes or so. Fine. We go out for a sunset walk in the meantime, and see the assistant on the boat that brought us, heading presumably to a grocery shack on shore for our dinner ingredients. More surprising is the fact that it appears every other staff member (all 5 or so of them, including the manager) is also on the boat. Sure enough, we’ve been left entirely alone but for one security guard at this resort/hotel. How weird.
20 minutes ends up being an hour or more, but we don’t mind, occupied as we are with holding the naked baby that was thrust in our arms when we went on a walk past the little village huts lining the spit. Yes, as we were casually walking along the waterside we walked by various families, and were led to the naked baby by a small boy who wanted his family photo taken. We took a photo of them all, had the naked baby thrust without warning into each of our hands (for good luck for the baby or in order to have photos of Caucasian girls holding the baby?!) and all will hopefully be mailed to them. It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been sort of sad as well – we asked them to help us write out their address but all we ended up getting was ‘Laiju. Laiju’s Bhavan. Kerala’. Laiju being the father. Bhavan meaning house/haven. Kerala being the state. Laiju’s House in Kerala state. Hmmmmm. Maybe we can send it care of the resort/hostel.

That was yesterday. Now we are in an Ashram. Rather than the quiet, remote country place I’d been expecting, my first impression was that we’d stepped into a complex in the Eastern Bloc, perhaps the Czech Republic. It’s a large cement set of apartment buildings, a pale colour of pink that is now fading underneath all of the bird poop & dirt that has accumulated over the years. We’re on the uppermost floor, which means a fabulous view. It also means we’re hosts to some of the weirdest hornet nests I’ve ever seen. They kind of look like massive upside down tea-cosies hanging on the ceiling, entirely covered with wasps. Very odd. The largest one is of course directly outside of our window, so big we didn’t even notice it at first, just assumed the upper half of the window was blocked. Then we looked more closely… We’re not allowed to take photos in the Ashram, but I’ve decided that that rule pertains only to the Ashram itself, not the view, so I took one of that. I may extend my exception to include the hornet nests, just ‘cause they’re so weird looking.
I realize a lot of people look up to this woman, Amma, but so far I’m rather unimpressed. I far preferred Dr.George’s quiet power behind Shanti Bhavan and all the other George Foundation programmes, compared with Amma’s face plastered over almost every available surface. Maybe it’s because I’m not really a ‘huggy’ person, and she’s built her foundation on giving people consoling hugs. I’m obviously just not grasping whatever it is that draws people to her. Maybe if I were to actually meet her I’d change my mind. She’s not here at the moment though, so the telling day will have to wait. Until then, I’ll content myself with feeling disgusted by the overt feeling of attempted deification going on, what with the ridiculous quantity of pictures of Amma set in ‘god-like’ poses (arms uplifted by a waterfall, in a large green pasture), often with a whitish halo around her, and plastered absolutely everywhere.

March 4, 2008 - Cochin, Kerala - India

Notes from the past two days – traveling from Tamil Nadu through Bangalore, Karnataka to Cochin, Kerala.

Departure times should include a1 hour Mad-is-always-late contingency timeframe.

Bananas do not travel well. Ever. Even if they looked tasty.

When the cellphone stops working, do not trust Evy to wake up to the watch alarm – she could sleep through anything, even if it means missing the disembarking location. Instead hope that fear of losing the 007 backpack will keep Mad tossing & turning and awake at 3:50am.

When the train guy tells you not to get off, make sure he actually understands which train station you want to get off at.

When you book a hostel, it can work out nicely to pick one that belongs to a family who send their son at 4 in the morning to pick you up from the train station 1 stop past the one you were supposed to get off at.

When you set your watch alarm so as not to sleep through the entire day, do not trust Ev or Mad to wake up – they could sleep through anything.

Guesthouse owners who feel you should experience their more expensive other guesthouses on the beach are pretty cool. Especially when they provide fresh watermelon & bathing trunks (belonging to the caretaker?) to make your bathing suits a little more decent (at least, that’s what we assumed they were provided for!).

Ocean water by Cherai beach in Kerala is practically typical body temperature, just slightly cooler. The closest you’ll get to feeling like an embryo again?! It makes for a very relaxing swimming experience.

When traveling on ferries (in this case from the guesthouse island to Fort Cochin) always maintain a firm grip on headgear. When aforementioned headgear is lost to the wind (Evy’s), there are fortunately many stalls selling hats on the shore.

Don’t let your rickshaw driver drop you off anywhere except within easy visibility of the site you requested. This is the second time we’ve been dropped off ‘just up the street’ from where we wanted to be (ie around 2 blocks and through an alley).

Just because it says ‘international money transfers’ doesn’t actually mean the business actually does them. We waited and waited for the guy to finish with the person ahead of us. Finally the little old man turned to us. ‘What?’ (rudely). ‘We’re wondering about the international money transfers, you do do them?’. ‘No!’ (turns back to his work with disgust). We waited briefly for some other form of acknowledgement, then gave up and left.

At tourist attractions, if the ticket lady is nasty, perhaps it’s not worth it after all. The Jewish synagogue next to the castle, an apparently famous sight, was more notable for the sheer volume of ‘Don’t Speak’ ,‘Don’t Touch’ ,‘Don’t enter’ and ‘Don’t Photograph’ signs than anything else. The tiles on the floor were kind of interesting, they reminded us of Omi’s dinner plates, but other than that there was nothing to not photograph but the odd so-so painting and an altarpiece entirely covered with wrinkled pink silk so you couldn’t see anything. I did desperately want to take photos of the immense number of ‘Don’t’ signs though!

When Lonely Planet’s recommendations start wearing a little thin, ignore them completely. The café they recommended was fine but uninteresting, the dance exhibition was borderline atrocious. Both were entirely populated by Caucasian tourists, which should really have been a tip-off.

Ignoring the 2 inch cockroaches/beetles on the nighttime ferry while sitting in front of the dirty old man whorking up a lung behind you is a lot easier said than done. There’s a reason why they recommend traveling during daylight hours.

Guesthouses who provide you with a card with detailed directions in English & the local language for the rickshaw driver to drive you safely back are awesome!

Final tally:

Guest House – *****

Fort Cochin business owners - **

Lonely Planet - *

One particular Rickshaw driver’s sense of humour - *****
(‘Hey ladies, want a ride in my Ferrari? It’s air conditioned!’)

Day on the whole - ****

March 3, 2008 – Tamil Nadu, India

The George Foundation – Shanti Bhavan

This past week has been my favourite so far. It’s been excessively hectic, but I suppose that’s my preferred work environment for the most part anyway.

I was given permission to start a little film class with the grade 8’s who were interested – all 14 were – as soon as they’d finished with Sports Day (last Saturday). Saturday evening we met up and began what will hopefully become ‘A Day in the Life at Shanti Bhavan’. It seemed like a good idea because we wouldn’t have a lot of time and it’s a subject they know a lot about, so we wouldn’t need to get into major research or anything. A good start for the basics, or so I thought.

I had no idea how much I’ve learned over the years until I tried to teach it to 14 kids in a week. There’s a lot to know and now there’s a lot of wobbly, maniacally in & out zooming and non-level footage. I suppose that’s how one learns, and that said, they were actually pretty good and really fast learners. A couple even had a good eye for composition, which I was particularly impressed with given that they’ve barely ever so much as touched a stills camera, let alone a video camera.

I divided them into pairs and each group took on a couple of topics from the general list of ideas we’d come up with. With 7 groups and 2-4 topics per group, not to mention the rigid daily schedule for each child to begin with, it meant that every spare moment of my time was spent filming. It was fabulous. And while I may have 16 tapes of footage to go through now, I’m really pleased I had the chance to work with them in an area I love. It makes a huge difference. Geography and Environmental Education and all that was interesting, but this proved to be a way to really get to know a bit more about the kids, and about Shanti Bhavan in general.

The more I learn about this place, the more I want to come back and be more involved with it in some way or other. It’s goals are simple, but impressive - the highest level of education possible in India, and for below-poverty-line children. The theory being, according to Dr. George’s book (the founder of ‘The George Foundation’, of which Shanti Bhavan is a part of), that ‘literacy as a goal is a meaningless concept if these people are destined to live and die in abject poverty.’ (p.42, Abraham George - India Untouched). From my understanding, the idea is that by providing children with a well-rounded, balanced education and general lifestyle, Shanti Bhavan is hoping to help them help themselves, their families, and their villages out of the destitution they’ve been constricted with since birth.

On our last day we went to visit one of the other projects The George Foundation has undertaken, Dr. George having taken on a number of projects in order to further his idea that ‘The real solutions lie in establishing good public governance, building strong human foundations through education and health care, creating economic opportunity, and ensuring social justice for all.’ (Pg 34-35, Abraham George – India Untouched). The project we visited was the Baldev Medical Centre, a medical institution which uses a computer programme who’s creation was instigated by Dr. George. Again, from my understanding, the programme was created to bridge the immense gap between available doctors and patients needing care. The programme is designed to be used by a trained operator, who with a series of questions and answers can narrow down with a relatively high degree of accuracy what and how serious the patient’s complaints are. This way, the few hours that the available doctor spends at the clinic are spent fruitfully, with the basics already gathered and only specialized attention needed. The system, titled EDPS, also stores the information permanently so that the patient’s medical history is always available on file.

We had an amazing impromptu tour of the medical centre, with a detailed explanation of all the work they do. I wish we’d asked to see it earlier because it then turned out that there’s a school of journalism and new media also run by The George Foundation, which we hadn’t realized we’d be allowed to visit. Maybe next time. Evy and I are already hoping to come back, and maybe bring Al or anyone else who’s interested along! We highly recommend it.

I’ve been teaching my Grade 6 geography class about the Inuit, and while in Hosur last weekend bought some sugar cubes and Maida flour to make ‘igloos’ with ’snow’. The kids loved it. More than I realized. At a certain point, partially through the proceedings, it seemed there was a deficiency in sugar cubes, which since I’d bought 3 packs of seemed a little weird. It turned out they’d been secreting them for later. I called out to the class and gradually they came out - sugar cubes from desks, sugar cubes slowly extricated from pockets, and a large miscellaneous number of casualty sugar cubes that had already been eaten. Next time I’ll have to use decoy candies of some sort…

February, 2008 - Tamil Nadu, India

The George Foundation – Shanti Bhavan

I got caught up in office politics today. It was horrible- at least, I found it really awkward- and it really shouldn’t have been a big deal at all.

The grade 6 class that I was helping with was doing a special project - building landmasses. Each child received an amount of dough (all from 1 Rs worth of Chapati dough) which they then had to turn into either an island or a plateau or a mountain or an isthmus (geography reminder – isthmus: the small piece of land connecting two larger pieces of land)… etc. I happily played with the children, and created a couple of chapati ducks to swim in the various bodies of water around their land forms, and didn’t think much more about it. The teacher who organized it was actually really funny, she thought the kids were sticking their grass too randomly on their land forms (we were poking bits of rock and grass into the dough for a more ‘realistic’ effect, at any rate the teacher was going around and when the child wasn’t looking she’d snip the tips off of the grass growths they’d planted. Some were insulted, as I would have been, to have their artistic license so callously treated, but it was funny to everyone nonetheless. There was a certain vim and vigour to the snipping that is hard to describe.

The resulting projects were put out on display for the school. People were asking who’s class it was that did the projects and it was passed on that it was the grade 6 geography class that I help out with, and the regular teacher. Well. Somehow this got convoluted and so in the assembly next day the principal thanked the class and me for coming up with the idea and making the projects. I’d already told numerous people that it was the teacher who’d come up with the idea, and I yelled it out at the assembly when the principal said that it was me, but it didn’t seem she heard. I went up to the teacher afterward and we laughed about it, I thought - I apologized and said I didn’t know what happened but that I’d yelled it out and would continue telling everyone, as I’d already told everyone, that it was her idea and I’d just been helping out. I thought she understood and it was all fine but then at lunch the teacher came up to me and said something along the lines of ‘you’re taking credit for my work’ - with a smile, but still. I felt very guilty and decided that I would announce the next day in assembly, when I was to be speaking anyway, that I hadn’t originated the idea, and would further explicitly explain to the principal that a mistake had been made.

The day continued, a busy one, and that evening, on our way to meet with the principal, we ran into the teacher again. ‘Make sure you tell the principal about the credit.’ At this point, I was kind of annoyed, both because I felt badly about the whole thing and because now I was feeling a little harassed as well. It ended up being the first thing I mentioned to the principal and vice-principal when we met up, and I apologized profusely. Fortunately it seemed they understood the position I’d been in as well, and I think agreed with me that the whole thing seemed a little childish. As it turned out, they too had each been individually approached by the teacher.

I’m consistently impressed with the principal’s knack of managing all the situations that arise here – she is a consummate principal, with a truly impressive knack for keeping a finger on the pulse of the entire school. When she made the announcement the next day she also apologized for the embarrassment it caused me - which was embarrassing in itself but at least it made the teacher realize I hadn’t done it on purpose. Oh the debacles of small schools. I suppose that especially in enclosed communities such as this one, feelings run much higher than in other places and certain things get given a higher meaning than they might somewhere else. All I know is that I’ve had enough of the whole office politics thing! Give me children to help any day - someone else can deal with the adult insecurities!

I should mention that I think that, as native English speakers, we tend to get ourselves into slightly more convoluted situations here. This is because even though all the teaching is done in English here, not everyone understands the way we speak, or, through different word & sentence choices, exactly what we mean. When it’s in regard to the weather or how nice someone’s outfit is, that doesn’t create any difficulties. It’s only when we want the precise meaning of what we’re saying to come across that we sometimes realize how often one or the other party makes do with a semi-translation.

Assumptions are made and not always corrected, making for at times serious miscommunications. As a minor example: the other day a teacher was asked the meaning of ‘house-broken’, with regard to a new dog in a story the class was reading. She thought it meant that the dog was still running around breaking everything in the house - a completely understandable definition, but also completely inaccurate. The students got a good laugh about the actual definition, but if I hadn’t been there they’d have happily kept on thinking that it meant what the teacher thought it meant - and suddenly there’re that many more people that believe that. Rather like the word ‘bungalow’ - for us it means something small, like a cottage or shack, whereas here it’s used for movie star mansions… When Evy heard Minti use the word bungalow, she assumed (naturally) that it meant something along the lines of a cottage. I’d heard the term before however, and so we were able to clarify. Not a big deal, but when you think of all the intercommunication that goes on in a system like a school… suffice it to say, it can get a lot more confusing and a lot more awkward…

February 23, 2008 - Tamil Nadu, India

The George Foundation – Shanti Bhavan

I never realized how dependent I am on revolving my life around the joys of food until I got restricted from doing it. I curse the gods of food poisoning. I suppose it’s good that my stomach realizes a bad thing immediately, and therefore immediately tries to shunt it out by whatever means possible. In terms of social etiquette, however, this characteristic leaves something to be desired. Fortunately it was just Evy and I at lunch, and when we had to hunt down an emergency hole-in-the-ground toilet, only the rickshaw driver had an idea that something might be wrong. It’s interesting how a hole in the ground (with a bucket and a tap for flushing purposes), surrounded by a flimsy shack and complete with a suitable stench and the odd insect, seems to assume the properties of heaven when you have a need for it.

What really bothers me about the whole episode is that we bought chocolate, crackers, cashews and various other exciting edibles to liven up our daily curry fare, and my stomach refuses to so much as think of the possibility. My mind is confused. Normally I would have consumed an excessive quantity of some or all of the above-mentioned items, now it doesn’t know what to do with itself. It keeps thinking tauntingly of those delicious food objects, and my stomach is flat out refusing. Maybe it’s a good lesson for it…

Our trip to Hosur today, also known in our minds as ‘closest tiny-town-with-internet-café’, was particularly interesting today. My food poisoning incident was not the only thing that livened it up. First of all, we got off to a later start than planned because Sports Day ran later than planned, which made our skit about Canada start and end later than planned, which meant we couldn’t catch our Rickshaw when planned.

Sports day began at the ungodly hour of 6:30 this morning. We rolled out of bed at approximately 6:25, I grabbed my camera and video camera, and we walked up to the field.

*Side Note -We currently have a third roommate, Katie, because supposedly the Nigerian minister of health is coming and they needed her room for him. We’ve started holding side-bets as to who it will actually end up being (somehow our experience with Indians so far has been an unintentional exaggeration of qualifications). The most recent theory was that it’ll end up being an American college student on his way to Rwanda. Part of that was confirmed yesterday, he is indeed coming from America and he is not the minister, but we’ll see who it actually turns out to be! Also, where the intended day of arrival was originally rumoured to be yesterday (Friday), it’s now supposedly tomorrow (Sunday). The original Katie return-to-own-room day was supposed to be Monday, now it’s looking more like Thursday. I would compare this display of mentality (that we’ve already found throughout many of our Indian experiences) to the mentality one sees in Mexico and Cuba – if it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’ve adapted to it quickly, it’s only really annoying when it regards something important – like getting to a train/plane on time or actually receiving airline tickets that were supposedly mailed.

Anyway, retracting from that major side tangent and back to Sports Day. We went up to the soccer field (before you delude yourself with visions of grass, remember that this is India, and to have the bare minimum of water for the plants already existent on the campus they recycle sewage water without completely removing the smell – the soccer field is a lovely large field, but it’s made of reddish packed down earth, no greenery). The drummer was drumming, the march about to begin. I whipped out the video camera to capture some footage - no battery. I’d accidentally left it on since the last time I used it. Damn. We made our way to the centre of the sidelines, where a lovely little booth had been created for the guests of honour, which apparently included us. We sat in the comfy plastic garden chairs, separated from the children and other teachers by a waist-height wooden fence. I got out my still camera. No battery. Sometimes you’d think that by this point I’d have learned to recharge the batteries the night before an event I know I’m interested in recording. Oh well. My Blue team kicked ass, but came in second behind Evy’s Purple team. She always had all the luck, but considering the Blue team was forecast to come in last by the majority of the school, I think we did pretty well!

After sports day, the Canadians (Evy & I + Jacques & Micheline from Montreal) put on a performance about Canada. We’d fortunately received more warning than usual of our impending production (we got a whole day, rather than 2 minutes!) and so had prepared a little skit infused presentation. (No one is really interested in sitting through a long talk about resources in Saskatchewan on a beautiful sunny day in January.)

We began the presentation with everything going on in English and French - we pondered having imitation sign language as well, and spent many amusing minutes trying to figure out how it might be done, but then figured that it might be a little too non-p.c. because the kids wouldn’t understand that we were mocking the pomposity of the typical Canadian governmental ceremony.

One of our links ended up being our imitations of the wildlife across Canada. Evy does a particularly nice beaver impression, and Jacques of a bear (I was a moose), but what the kids loved were the Canada Geese. We realized that there are Canada Geese all over Canada, so at each stop in each province/territory (we traveled by airplane (’Ladies & Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs…’), train (’All Aboard!’), car (’Dad, are we there yet?! Evy’s poking me!’), dogsled (’Mush Mush’) and snowmobile (my fur cap came in handy)) - we imitated Canada geese, loudly and with great flapping vigour. The school has been ringing with the sounds of kids imitating Canada Geese periodically ever since. I think if nothing else, they’ll remember that!

The post-food poisoning incident in Hosur was our bank debacle. For some reason we’re having major difficulties with our bank & visa cards at the local banks. We hadn’t realized it would be an issue because by happenstance we seem to have gone to banks that worked for us in the past two cities. In Hosur however, our unfortunate Rickshaw driver took us to 8 banks, and past 3 closed ones. Each bank entailed a wait in the line up (often with a rifle-carrying security guard… who needs a rifle to guard an atm, anyway?!), and then a painful experimenting of each and every bank and visa card, always resulting in the same message ‘invalid card’. Finally, at the Christian Syrian Bank, it recognized me. ‘Welcome, Madeleine I Grant’. We asked for the money, it made auspicious noises, and then a lovely screen came up - ‘I need to be serviced’. So much for that. We decided to try one last one, IndusInd, only because it was three doors down and we were giving up and on our way home. Perhaps sensing our desperation, it worked. There are now officially two banks that work for us in India - Citibank, and IndusInd. The State bank, the common ICIC bank, and a multitude of others do not. We now realize that rather than a quick bank stop, we need to plan at least 2 hours of leeway for all banking purposes, ’cause who knows what might happen.

February 19, 2008 - Tamil Nadu, India

The George Foundation – Shanti Bhavan

Weird snuffling noises are emanating from the other side of the room. The creature emitting them happens to be my sister. Now she’s decided to eat an apple. I can hear every bite being chewed with smacking loudness. Evy with major allergies.

Her nose is obviously completely blocked since she’s been blowing it loudly and frequently and she apparently still can’t breathe through it. Thus the loud, open-mouthed chewing. She’s been sleeping so she’s in one of those slightly grumpy I-slept-too-long-in-the-afternoon-and-am-totally-out-of-it moods. I, for once, think before opening my mouth and refrain from commenting. Instead, Ipod is rapidly extricated and headphones put in. I completely understand where she’s coming from, as yesterday morning I was in a similar state. We think it’s something in our room. It doesn’t make the sounds coming over the Ipod music any more appealing though. Ah well, there are certain times where travel companions, sister or no sister, are better left alone in their misery. There’s no point in prodding an argument, satisfying though acknowledging how revolting she currently seems might be…