Wow!daipur

Last weekend I headed out to Rajasthan with my friend Silpa for a weekend with fellow fellows Michael and Rick. As the Rough Guide mentions, Udaipur is arguably one of the most romantic cities in India, framed by Lake Picchola, the Lake Palace and the City Palace and windy, shifting lanes replete with miniature paintings, leatherbound journals and hippie uniforms galore.

The consummate host, Michael has settled in quite nicely to life in Udaipur and at his NGO, Seva Mandir, which is always full of a diverse group of international and Indian volunteers. This visit to Udaipur was also the first time I was visiting a fellow in their city, and it was refreshing to see Udaipur from a local perspective after doing the tourist route last time I was there with Em and Jaime in 2004. We met Michael’s local fruit juice supplier, shopped at Seva’s handicrafts store, met and ordered lots of custommade shirts from his tailor, volunteered at the deaf school with him and his colleagues from Seva, and rode around Udaipur on his scooty.

Many thanks to Michael, Fizzy, Alvaro, Ginny, and the Love Nest for their warm welcome and accommodation.

I only work in lists now, so here goes:

1) Dinner at the Ambrai: Friday night was the perfect introduction to Udaipur; we went to the Ambrai Restaurant in the Old City which had the most picturesque, perfectly lit views of the City Palace and the Lake Palace.



2) Beirut in the Love Nest (though not getting my butt kicked by Michael’s roommate): I have convinced myself that it is all right to have lost all beirut skills as I near my thirties. … (Translation: I have started daily practices with ping pong balls and sturdy plastic cups.) Ahhhh… the days when I hate a custom made beirut table in the basement of my house… le sigh


3) Tour of the City Palace and Sunset at Monsoon Palace: Longest palace tour followed by incredibly satiating lunch (coincidentally at the same place Em, Jaime and I ate last time) followed by the longest wait for a sunset ever. Suggestion box for Monsoon Palace café: Serve Kingfisher.



4) Hike up to the Temple of the Hanging Bells (not the official name): Our final day in Udaipur, Silpa and I decided to take the hike up to the top of a hill behind Michael’s house, which in the end proved to be well worth it. At the top was a steep stairway lined with hanging bells to be rung as you ascended the staircase. It appeared one took coconuts to the temple for blessing and then consumption. The security guard at the top noticed Silpa and I, coconutless, and gave us many a helping of coconut. Delish!


5) Volunteering with Michael and the Seva interns: Each Thursday, Michael and his colleagues volunteer at a deaf school and a blind school. Earlier in the month they had done some major cleaning and fixing up at the deaf school, painting the wall that lines the playground as well as painting a large checkboard on the ground on the school grounds. They also made checker pieces out of a cut tree trunk; after Alvaro taught them how to play checkers, they were off! We challenged them to a few games and they picked it up immediately. Next was painting the outside wall - with cricket scenes and flowers. It was interesting watching the boys communicate and sign with one another, a mix of what appeared to be Hindi sign language and other forms of understood gestures and facial expressions. I'm still looking for that Hindi sign language book Michael! Four bookstores so far and nothing!

Thus ended our February Rajasthan adventure, to be repeated in March form for Holi.

Catching up with my reading...

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
“All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.” “…. I understood a simple fact: if you can’t go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world – indeed, nowhere is the world.”

“’I understand your dismay, Fraulein Averbuch. I truly do. I am not certain I would be able to make the decision I am asking you to make. I would be just as tormented, just as anguished. I would be angry at those who asked me to decide. But I cannot be you; we cannot be someone else. We are within our life and we stay there for as long as possible, that’s our home. We need life. There is too much death already, and there is probably more coming our way.’
‘What is life? This is no lie. Who wants this life?’
‘The dead leave it to us to struggle in this world. They go elsewhere, wherever it is, and wait for God to sort it all out. But we have to stay here, to be here, no matter how hard it is. Nobody can be alone. Life is the life of others. My life, your life, that is nothing.’
‘Curse upong your head, Herr Taube. May you reach the bottom of my suffering and die there.’ ‘Think of life, I beg you. Let’s live. We have to live.’”

“Between the licks of his swirling-candy stick, Lazarus asks Olga if she love someone. Yes, she says. He asks her if she is going to marry him. Probably not, she says. Why not? Because sometimes you have no control over life and it keeps you far away from who you love.”


The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t know what would happen to me, bad or good, or whether I could bear it either way.”

“I wondered if we’d ever leave the bed. I didn’t want to. Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness.”

“The present was enough, though my work in the cemetery told me every day what happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough: it becomes your entire history.”

“Their love blazed from them. And then they left. I think now that everything that was concentrated in that one look – there in raising me, their patient lessons in every subject they knew to teach, their wincing efforts to give me freedoms, their example of fortitude in work – allowed me to survive myself.”


Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
“What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.”

“’Never love a wild thing. … That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”


The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
“All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.” ~ Isak Dinesen

“I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don’t even know it.”

“Quietness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums.”

“It’s my time to die, and it’s your time to live. Don’t mess it up.”

“Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.”

“If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you.”

Development Marketplace nostalgia

Recently I have been having some of what Uyennie calls the "green grass syndrome" and reminiscing about the days at the Development Marketplace, the program that I worked at at "The Bank".

I think that I originally had some nostalgia because of a recent post by a fellow fellow and her reflections thus far on development. My gut reaction was an immediate defense of social entrepreneurship, which is a key component of the work that the DM was doing (see video below)- trying to find sustainable solutions to issues that face all people in all sectors of development. I understand my fellow fellow's concerns about the limitations of social entrepreneurship, not taking into account the historical and social context in which they are working and which focus heavily on market-based solutions to development challenges.

However, the entrepreneurship side of development provides sustainability, which yes, is a buzz word that is used far too much, to these projects. What is the utility of providing an initiative that conducts extenstive study and implementation of a project that has no hope of being sustainable or lasting for a period of time to actually affect and impact the target community? The two have to go hand in hand, which is something that I think the DM really did try and find. I think that it would be misguided to say that people focusing on social entrepreneurship always fails to take these issues into account. In the end, an initiative may have an excellent business model for rapid scale up, replication and financial sustainability, but if it does not take into out the current social, political and cultural context of the target beneficiary community that will possibly negate the supposed sustainability of a project. I would argue that social entrepreneurs are well aware of this balance, but then again, it would not be the first time I've been wrong about something.

Some good resources on social entrepreneurship: Paul Hudnut's "What's a BOPreneur?", change.org's social entrepreneurship blog, the Acumen Fund blog, and of course, the Development Marketplace blog! :)

India helplines

This morning I was tasked with finding a comprehensive list of organizations that provide helplines for victims of domestic violence. After our Bell Bajao! campaign's new television ads were launched in January a lot of victims of domestic violence have been calling the office asking for help and/or legal aid. Not having the capacity for this sort of thing in house, it became my job to find a comprehensive list of these numbers ASAP. Um. I'm on it.

I found one such helpline for Chennai at the end of the list below, two down from "to catch monkey, snake or any creature..." helpline and eight down from the "protection of beverage, cigarette and cell using while driving vehicle" helpline.

curious...

EVE TEASING DOWRI-1091 PROTECTION OF BEVERAGE,CIGRETTE & CELL USING WHILE DRIVING VEHICLE -103. CHIT FUND FORGERY - 28555089 (ASK FOR CRIME BRANCH) CHILD HELPLINE - 1098 POLLUTION & NOISE HELPLINE - 9840140103 ANY COMPLAINT WITHOUT UR NAME & NUMBER - 52103535 ANIMAL HELPLINE - 12700 SENIOR CITIZEN HELPLINE - 1253 TO CATCH MONKEY,SNAKE OR ANY CREATURE - 22200335/22301328 CHICKEN POX HELPLINE - 1600331116 WOMEN COMMUTERS HELPLINE - 25353999 TO HELP VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & SEXUAL ABUSE THE HELPLINE NUMBER IS - 9840766666

New(ish) Flat

Per the previous pigeon post, I shifted flats last December and now live with some rather interesting characters. The flat is rather sparsely furnished, usually messy and smelling of stale cigarette smoke (a la a roommate who refuses to open the door to the balcony when he smokes).

But it's cozy and it's home.







* hm, I realize that will not entice anyone to come and visit me. It is a nice flat and I have created a little separate haven in my room that has plenty of space for visitors on the extra mattresses! Come visit Dilli! :)

if i had a coffee pot at work....

* source: http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/

Mangled Mangalore

In another disturbing turn of events, the day before Republic Day last week, young men and women in a pub were assaulted in Mangalore, a city in the south of India, for their perceived "lewd" behavior by members of an extreme right-wing Hindu political organization known as the Sri Ram Sena. For some reason, this is a subject of contention - "who is to blame?" is the question that is being thrown around - the perpetrators of violence or the women who were not dressed "appropriately" and in a pub?

The Sri Ram Sena activists have leveled accusations at the women that were "involving themselves in immoral activities, including consuming alcohol, dressing indecently, and mixing with youths of other faiths." The youtube video is incredibly disturbing (um, especially the circle and arrow labeling one of the "molesters").

On the other side of the debate are government officials such as Renuka Chowdhury, the Women and Child Development Minister, who is calling on the BJP to denounce the attacks and stop these kinds of chauvinistic, oppressive and paternalistic actions from happening in India.

Apparently the perpetrators were arrested and promptly released on bail - the women are refusing to press charges and the pub owners say that they cannot identify the attackers. Whatever happens, it is EXtremely disconcerting that this type of behavior is happening in India, these bands of "moral police", groups of young men, targeting and assaulting young women in broad daylight.

More disturbing is how politicized the attacks have become, apparently polarizing the entire South and much of the country. We had a staff meeting this morning at my NGO and one senior member of the team wanted to write about the attacks on the organization's blog; every other member of the team said it was a bad idea - we could not go near the issue for fear of being targeted by these right wing political groups. Political calculations and sensitivity overriding the need for educated, informed commentary on attacks that should be denounced the whole country over. Calculated, violent attacks on women's basics freedoms of movement and space. How do attacks like this even require debate? Bah!