An Evening with the Bookoholics

Last Sunday, I was given the honor of ringing in the inaugural meeting of Surat's start-up venture, Bookoholics.com.

Something like the Netflix of books, Bookoholics.com is an emerging book rental company that loans out books on demand via postal service for a nominal monthly subscription fee. In a relatively short time, they've amassed a catalogue of more than fourteen hundred titles solely through book donations. To my thinking, this low-cost and potentially high-impact model is a prime example of the commodity of innovation, which has in recent years torn the economic spotlight away from India's established manufacturing powerhouse.

That such a venture should start up in Surat of all places bodes well for a city which is here often viewed in the same prism we Americans (perhaps only somewhat unfairly) pigeonhole New Jersey - that is, a land better suited for churning out producers than poets; where the only parks are industrial; a place where the romance of India's timelessness goes up on trial in sweat shops and commercial retail outlets.

Meetings like the one Bookoholics.com sponsors aren't just a place for idle gabbing; they're creating a free, public space for people to come together for the purpose of doing something (anything!) besides merely spending money. That, I believe, is a wonderful thing which is too often forgotten in the din of development.

Spearheaded by Mr. Rahul Kedia, Bookoholics.com is a refreshing idea whose value-added isn't just a culture of literacy, but a literacy of culture.

You can find out more about the Bookoholics by visiting their website, www.bookoholics.com.

A video of my speech may be found by clicking here.

The Life of a Student in Rural India

At Madhi High School, we are officially three weeks into the second term of the school year.  In fact, I am almost half way through this term’s materials as we are moving at a steady pace.  Classes are going well for me and my co-teacher Ameeta.  We have found our rhythm and are working well together to teach our students English. 

While my academic classes have been going well, lately my Spoken English class attendance has been at an all time low.  On most days I only have a handful of students.  I have talked to the students, the other English teachers and even the principal and they have all told me that this is normal.  Students are tired at the beginning of their second term. They will be more focused after Diwali break in November.  The students at Madhi High School finished their first term examinations on September 23^rd.  Their examinations lasted ten days- each day they would write one exam in the morning and another in the afternoon.  On September 24^th, the second term officially began.  Less than one day after they completed their exams, they returned to school and to their regular classes.  No wonder they are exhausted!

The lack of attendance for Spoken English classes left me frustrated.  I was arriving at school every day, an hour early, ready to teach my students and they were not showing up.  I had excellent attendance last term and was so disappointed at how drastically the situation changed.  However, the other day, I had a realization.  These students work so incredibly hard. How can I be upset that they need a short break from Spoken English?

The typical schedule for an average secondary school student is as follows:

                6: 00 am: Wake up and get dressed

                6:30am/7:00 am: Go to tuition classes

                9:00 am: Finish tuition classes and return home for breakfast

                10:00 am: Arrive at school

                10: 30 am: School begins.  Classes start at 11 and go until 4:50 pm

                5:00 pm: Go to tuition classes

                7:30 pm: Finish tuition classes

                8:00 pm: Eat dinner

                8:30 pm: Study or do housework

                11:00 pm: Bed time

Tuition classes are extra classes or tutoring sessions offered by teachers before and after school.  Usually there are ten to fifteen students who go to a teachers’ house for supplemental lessons in several subjects.  At Madhi, like many other government schools, there are no clubs.  There are sports teams but students do not regularly practice.  Sometimes they get in a few minutes of cricket during recess or kick the soccer ball around for a while.  They have no fun extra-curricular activities to participate in.  Their lives revolve around school and there is much pressure on them to succeed.  Of course there are the students who do not work hard, just as there are in every school around the world.  But most students work tirelessly to pass their classes in hope for a better a better future.  They do not get a break after exams end.  They have one long break in November, for Diwali and another break at the end of the year, but no long summers off like we have in the States.   No summer camp or Little League.  What’s more, they go to school six days a week.  Monday through Friday they have full days and on Saturdays they start school at 8:00 am and finish at 11:30 am.  Then, they have more tuition classes.  Can you imagine?

When I taught in a rural village in Malawi for two and a half years, I noticed a similar situation.  Actually, it may have been worse.  I taught at a boarding school and in general, my students slept for 2-4 hours a night.  They studied late into the night every night.  Their weekends were filled with study halls and they were only allowed to leave campus one Saturday each month.  They did have extra-curricular activities but most clubs were for additional academic support, like Maths Club, Science Club, Writer’s Club, etc.  Still more, these students worked literally around the clock to succeed in high school in order to be eligible for university.

The education systems in developing countries are weak.  There are insufficient and poorly trained teachers, limited resources and a lack of schools and universities.  In both of my experiences, the students work so hard because there are fewer spots in college than there are students.  They study endlessly, hoping to make it to college and get a decent job that can support their family.  In both India and Malawi, there is a strong family bond and even when a child is grown, marries and has children of his own, he is still responsible for supporting his parents and other siblings.  Thus, there is a great demand on these students to succeed in school.  I am not sure about you, but I cannot imagine taking on the rigorous schedule these students face daily.  I think I will cut my Spoken English students a little slack.  

India's Gender Justice Gap, Part II

Greeetings all!

After some much-needed R&R in Rajasthan, it's back to business as usual here in Kadod. I last left you with what, for me, was a thought provoking article about the so-called 'Gulabi gang' of female vigilantes who are literally tackling India's timeless patriarchy head-on, one flogging at a time. Writing for Slate magazine, Ms. Amana Fontanella Khan queries, (almost rhetorically, I might add):

"Why aren't they turning to political activism as opposed to vigilantism?"

At least one explanation is intuitive enough: The Gulabis are symptomatic of a larger pattern in India's State-society relations in which the contemporary State has a nearly-uncontested grip on political authority while, at the same time, a great deal of society (especially disenfranchised groups) is pessimistic regarding politicians' capacities to effectively govern - to say nothing of nearly ubiquitous doubts over the veracity of leaders' commitments to legitimacy.

Naturally, periodic features of the news cycle send moonlight politicos into fits of jingoistic saber-rattling and partisan flag-waving. Today, for example, the verdict to a centuries-old-dispute between Hindus and Muslims was conclusively adjudicated by India's Supreme Court. Electricity grids and cell-towers were down throughout our (majority Muslim) district for the better part of the day. (Tangentially, some have speculated that this was a ploy to disrupt communications-technologies which would have been critical for organizing an impromptu riot-turned-bloodbath, of which nearby Surat has painfully recent memories). At any rate, so far as I know, all's quiet on India's western front. Still, party leaderships were quick to chime in on the ruling and what has for centuries been a matter of faith and decades a matter of litigation, finally died a matter of party politics in the course of a few hours.

But back to the issue of gender justice, why indeed do the Gulabis lack a legitimate political parallel? To my thinking, it's because, like many Indians, they tend to see the politics of the State as an obstacle to (not a source of) social progress. Their very existence is proof enough that the India's legal system of protecting equality-between-genders (or lack thereof) is fundamentally broken. Noting that, the Gulabi movement is expressly invested in compensating for, rather than fixing that system. While state leaders use party lines to dither about oughts, Gulabi women use their homemade cudgels to point to what is. But are they a reasonable, or even sustainable vision of what could be?

I don't think so, but absent a legitimate (preferably nonviolent) alternative to improving what is now a decidedly bleak outlook shared by most of India's nearly-60,000,000 women, one can only fault the Gulabis to the extent that s/he believes that justice only trickles down from the Law, rather than surging up from the people who follow it.

It can be difficult to imagine for those of us who hail from a government which self-consciously purports to be "of the people, for the people, and by the people;" but at least here in rural India, there's enough of a vacuum between the government and the people that groups like the Gulabis have more than enough room to do something like lynch a rapist without legal consequences. This same political vacuum exists in India's neighbor to the west - to the effect that Taliban and al-Qaeda cells have established a virtually impregnable outpost in South Asia. So, given the dramatic contrast of terrorist training camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, shouldn't we be relieved that India's legitimation crisis has taken the form of women banding together in the face of a cruel and oppressive patriarchy?

Maybe so.

When it comes to women's issues, the Indian State is a broken record (and to their credit, these Gulabis are doing one hell of a job to put a spin on "revolutions per minute"). They're bold beyond convention and assertive to the point of violence. They are, in the truest sense, radicals. Historically, they remind me less of early 20th century America's legions of flappers and feminists as they do later 20th century America's radicalized civil rights activists. Lamentably, it took more than their tragic assassinations to clear (or at least mildly polish) in America's history books the names of Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton. In spite of that - perhaps in part because I'm writing to you on the last day of September, a month as auspicious for American social justice in 1862 as it was in 1957 - it is my suspicion that more traditionally celebrated and relatively moderate agents of change (most notably Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) may not have been given their national platforms but for the much less palatable picture of radical alternatives cropping up in mainstream America's headlines.

Whether we like it or not, the attention it's garnering from the international media is itself a testament to the hypothesis of the Gulabi experiment: that when the oppressed contend with their oppressor, a sharp blow from a bamboo stick may now and again leave a deeper impression than a manifesto of words.

Unfortunately for those of us who hold stock in Mahatma Gandhi's cautionary truism that, "An eye-for-an-eye leaves the whole world blind," Indian political leaders have yet to give meaningful evidence of both the depth-of-insight and range-of-foresight necessary to (legally) close India's gender justice gap.

Very Near, Not Very Far

On Tuesday evening, I returned from my first adventure in India.  While the students at Madhi High School wrote their first term examinations,  I travelled through four states in India for twelve days, exploring cities and ancient architectural wonders, meeting people from all over the world and of course relaxing over ice cold beer.

Party in Bombay

My trip began on Friday September 10^th.  I decided to commence my tour of Western India in Bombay (Mumbai) for the weekend because my friend Carrie was returning to St. Louis permanently and I wanted to wish her farewell.  After another action movie scene of running after the moving train (sadly, this is becoming normal for me), four hours later I arrived in sunny Bombay.  I hadn’t seen the sun in a couple months so I was ecstatic!  That night, Carrie’s friends threw her a huge farewell party.  Over fifty people showed up- many other Americans who live and work in Bombay as well as all of her Indian friends.  After an hour or so, the party was dying because someone was playing soft rock music.  We were talking about playing more party-friendly music, but no one knew how to work the sound system, so I went for it.  As some of you might know, I have some experience as a DJ, so one thing led to another and I became the official DJ of the night.  It turned into an awesome party and finally started dying down at 5:00 AM.  I had an awesome time DJing and everyone seemed to like my music selections.  Anytime someone had a request, they approached me and asked, “Miss DJ Emily, can you please play....”  It was quite a fantastic night!

Spinning cotton at Gandhi's house

After a relaxing weekend hanging out in Bombay, late Sunday afternoon I hopped on a train to Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, not far from the state of Rajasthan, my destination.  I arrived in Ahmedabad at midnight and the city was wide awake, celebrating another festival, Ganesh.  I definitely should have booked a hotel, but the procrastinator and poor planner that I am thought I could find something when I got there.  Thankfully, my rickshaw driver spoke English and drove me all over the city until I found an available room at Safar Inn.  (A note about rickshaw drivers in India- their favourite phrase is “Very Near, Not Very Far” when you ask for directions anywhere).  The manager, Francis, is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  He is Indo-Portuguese and has been to over one hundred countries around the world.  He and his wife own a medical tourism business and travel frequently to promote their work.  He was so happy to talk to a foreigner and we actually spent most of the day talking about our experiences in Africa while he gave me a personal tour of the city on the back of his motorcycle. 

Francis took me to Gandhi’s house where I learned to spin cotton just as Gandhi did every day.  We also went to the best ice cream parlour for mango lassis, to a famous textile museum, and a night market where I shopped for beautiful and colourful Gujarati fabric.  We finished our evening with a delicious dinner from McDonald’s.    I look forward to going back to Ahmedabad again and spending more time with Francis and his family.

Udaipur

The next day, I arrived in the lake city of Udaipur in Rajasthan.  Immediately, I knew I was in paradise.  This small, quiet European-like city surrounds a large lake.  The weather was excellent and in no time I fried in the sun that I hadn’t seen in so long.  I spent my time exploring the ancient lakeside palaces where famous Indian kings had once lived.  I even took a boat to the palace located in the centre of the lake. Udaipur is unique because every building has a rooftop restaurant and bar overlooking the city and the lake.  I spent each night leisurely enjoying Rajasthani thali (small samples of several kinds of food) and sipping ice cold Kingfisher beers with other travellers from all over the world.   One night, Zach met me in Udaipur and we had dinner with an older British couple who is driving around the world.   Norman and Barbara spent 25 years working six days a week at a convenience store to save up for a trip around the world in their Land Rover. They had arrived from the Middle East and Iran was actually their favourite country they’d visited thus far.  A year earlier, Barbara was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease and they decided to speed up the trip so she could enjoy it before her disease progressed.  They were fascinating to talk to and had so many great experiences and words of wisdom to share.  Another day, I spent the whole afternoon walking around the city with Joe, a graduate of a school, just outside my hometown, St. Louis.  We took an electric cable car to the top of a mountain that overlooks the whole city.  At the top, we talked about the Cardinals and St. Louis,  as well as our travels, while drinking ice cold beers.  It was a great afternoon.

Wearing a snake

Snake charming

After a few days on the lake, I hopped on an overnight bus to Jaipur, the pink city and capital of Rajasthan.  Eric met me here and together we walked around the city where all buildings are a light shade of pink.  We explored ancient forts and climbed to the tops of mountains all over the city.  At Amber Fort, we met a group of snake charmers (snake charming was outlawed several years ago) and learned how to play the wooden instrument that makes snakes rise up from their sleep.  The charmers then wrapped the black python around my neck which was an incredibly strange feeling.   At Sun Temple, nicknamed Monkey Temple, hundreds of monkeys roam the hills.  Here, we fed them peanuts which they took straight out of our palms.  We witnessed a macho monkey grab a dog and continue to punch it until it limped away.  We also spent a good half our throwing peanuts high into the air, making the monkeys jump for them so we could try to get a mid-air shot with our cameras.  Unfortunately, the city of Jaipur was slightly overcrowded and much polluted.  People all over the city try to take advantage of tourists and we had our fair share of run-ins with scam artists. Nonetheless, we enjoyed everything we saw and still managed to have a great time.

Monkey training

At night, in Jaipur, we ate delicious tandoori chicken at rooftop restaurants.  One night we ate with a couple, Holly and Adam, from London.  After dinner, they taught us some famous British drinking games and we continued on to a few more pubs.  After two days in Jaipur, we’d felt we seen it all, so we impulsively decided to hitch a five-hour ride to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.  What can I say? The Taj Mahal is just as magnificent as you imagine it to be.  This massive monument is positively stunning and I could just stare at it for hours. I would like to go back in the future because you are supposed to go at sunrise and unfortunately it was pouring when Eric and I visited and our visit was slightly tainted.

The Taj Mahal and I

Royal Rambagh Palace courtyard

We returned to Jaipur for one more day before the long journey back to our village.  On our last day in Jaipur, we hung out with a couple from the Vermont, Julia and Tom, who are also travelling around the world.  We found out that the best hotel in the world is in Jaipur, so we made reservations for high tea at the Royal Rambagh Palace, once home to a king but was converted to a hotel in 1950.  It was exquisite as we snacked on scones and tasty pastries while sipping the “champagne of tea”.   I then pretended that I was touring hotels to find one suitable for my parents and we asked to see a room.  The cheapest room runs $2000 a night, in case you’re planning a visit!

Late Monday night, we ended our journey as we boarded our night train back home.  All in all, I had a great time and enjoyed travelling by myself much more than I expected.  I met so many interesting people and saw a much different side of India than I experience in the village.  Fourteen noisy and uncomfortable hours later, we arrived home in the village.  While we were gone, the monsoon ended and now it’s scorching hot and sunny once again.  I knew I was back in the village when I walked into my house and went to my cupboard and found a rat inside.  While I was away, a rat managed to break into my cupboard and ate my year’s supply of DayQuil and NyQuil, of all things.  There is one very medicated rat somewhere in my house right now.   I think I’m ready for another vacation.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi!

Ganesh Chaturthi is a 10-day long festival honoring Ganesh, the Hindu god associated with wealth, success, and the removal of obstacles. In the weeks leading up to the festival, idols of Ganesh are constructed all over India, some as small as an inch tall and others as tall as 25 feet! The celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi ends on the 10th day when the idols of Ganesh are taken to be submerged in bodies of water, symbolizing a sending off of Ganesh to his home in Kailash while also taking with him the misfortunes of his worshipers.


I came back to Kadod just in time for the last day of the festival, otherwise known as Ganesh Visarjan. In Kadod, there's a road that stretches down to the bank of the Tapi River, making this town the most convenient place for Ganesh Visarjan to take place within a 10km radius. From noon until 7:30pm today, more than 60 Ganesh idols were brought in on ornately decorated carts pulled by tractors and vans. With each procession, the devotees of that particular idol would dance to music booming from loudspeakers, throwing handfuls of pink-colored powder at each other and at bystanders, like me.



When I was asked several times by friends and familiar students to dance with them and play dodgeball with globs of colored powder, I felt so relieved to be back in Kadod where, unlike cities like Jaipur, I feel people make genuine efforts to make me feel like a part of their community. I was happy today being able to comfortably call Kadod my home away from home.

Happy Ramzan Eid!

Weeks earlier, one of my Spoken English students, Rizwan, invited Zach and myself to celebrate Ramzan Ei (also known as Eid ul-Fitr) with his family. Ramzan Eid marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan during which Muslims fast from sun up until sun down every day.

Traditionally, it is forbidden to fast on this day, so the day began with Zach, myself, and Rizwan's family sharing a small breakfast. We showered compliment after compliment on Rizwan for his enthusiasm in Spoken English, but his parents still told us that if he ever acts up during class, we shouldn't hesitate to do what we have to put him back in line. We didn't ask them to clarify.

At 1pm, I returned to Rizwan's house to have lunch, which was chicken biriyiani, assorted vegetables and popper (fried, fluffy, corn chips kind of dish). I arrived at 1, as I was told to do, but the rest of the family had already eaten right before I got to the house. I was really confused why I was the only one with a plate while the rest of them were just watching me. I begged them to at least a little with me, but I think they preferred and actually enjoyed just watching me eat.

After lunch, Rizwan's father drove me to the cosway (bridge) which had been underwater for the past few weeks due to the monsoon's. Just this morning, the waters had receded enough to let bikes and cars drive through. We spent at least half an hour walking through the water coming up to our ankles talking about the village, his career as a bus driver, and Rizwan's future. Although I have a long long way to go before I feel comfortable with my Hindi, I was so happy that I had this conversation with him and was able to spend time like this with someone in the village.

India's Gender Justice Gap

As I sit down to comment on the state of women in India, I'll be the first to admit to a fair deal of self-consciousness. I really can't help but be deeply aware that I have a certain perspective which might well be likened to a pair of tinted spectacles. The lenses that color my world with its particular hues are principally informed by (among many cross-cutting identities) my gender, ethnicity and cultural background (white American male). Nevertheless, it is the world and not the lens which I look at on a daily basis. So, after several months of looking, it's time for me to speak.

Kadod, I'm sorry to say, is a working model of much of what's terribly wrong with the situation that most Indian women are subject to. Daily, I meet and work alongside women who are nightly beaten by their husbands. Even though I was born and raised in a society that vehemently disdains domestic violence against women, I am crushed less by moral disgust than by my sheer powerlessness to help these women help themselves. There are no women's shelters here. In fact, so far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any kind of support network in place for abused women living outside the city. Here, even a battered woman's place is in her home, so friends are hardly in a position to offer her a safe place lest they imperil themselves or their families. This is to say nothing of law enforcement agencies (dominated, incidentally, by men) who tend to shrug off domestic abuse as a fact of nature.

I don't want to mislead you. I've met plenty of men and women here who don't appear to be living in physically violent or otherwise hostile domestic situations. In fact, I would go so far as to say that for a large majority of people I've met here. But the prevailing attitude here in the village is that what goes on in other people's homes is other people's business. When good people do nothing in the face of injustice, silence becomes consent.

Grim as the situation painted above must seem, it's hardly aberrant. From what I can gather, it's much the same in any of India's rural villages (which house more than 80% of her 1.2 billion people). According to present projections from the United Nations, 2 in 3 married Indian women are abused by their husbands. That means that there are roughly 100 million more battered wives in India than there are people in the United States. It ought to go without mentioning, but especially for a country widely presumed to lead the world's power politics over the course of the next century, that's a jarring -- and shameful -- figure.

Recently, Slate magazine ran an interesting piece about the Gulabi movement: a gang of female vigilantes out to avenge women who are beaten by their husbands. I think their story raises some fascinating issues concerning the roles of state and society in India; invokes larger dilemmas of means versus ends; and ultimately, points to the the challenge of figuring out how we can eliminate the worst injustices suffered by some of the most disenfranchised human beings on the planet. I invite you to read that article by following the link below. I'm going to get to work putting together some of my own thoughts about the Gulabis for my next post. In the meantime, I'd welcome any and all of your comments and ideas.

http://www.slate.com/id/2260797/pagenum/all/#p2

How To: Make Lemon Juice

Last week, in Spoken English class, I taught my students the Imperative tense. Go to sleep, brush your teeth, do you homework and so on.  Then, I had them write a short list of the directions and commands their parents give them on a daily basis.  I got a wide variety of responses- Stop hitting your sister! Eat your roti (bread)! Turn down the T.V.! To assess their understanding of the lesson, I concluded with a homework assignment.  They were instructed to write a "How to" on a certain task- a recipe, how to make something or how to do something.

The following morning, my students arrived for class, eager to share their homework.  One student wrote instructions on how to make a paper boat.  Another students explained how to make the famous local sandwiches here.  Below are instructions on how to make lemon juice.  Dhaval, one of my most hard-working students gave detailed directions on how to make this popular local beverage.  While he suggests serving it cold, it can also be served hot, to sooth a scratchy throat or assuage a cough.  Enjoy the recipe!

Happy Krishna Janmashtami!

Today, Hindus around the world celebrated Krishna Janmashtami, a festival commemorating the birth of the god, Krishna. Thanks to Hiren Patel's enormous generosity, I was able to witness parts of the celebration in his community and with his family. All over Kadod, families and friends gathered in houses and temples lifting up prayers and offerings to the baby Lord Krishna. As I took time to soak it all in during the night, I came to really appreciate the intrinsic value of being a member of such a small, close-knit community. It's something that I and many others miss out on in the states, being able to see your neighbors as friends and even family.

According to Hiren, in years past, communities in Kadod would begin celebrating Janmashtami and have songs and prayers occurring 24 hours a day for 8 consecutive days. That practice has been left to tradition, but members of the Hindu community here will still pray and sing several hours a day during this time of celebration. Thank you again, Hiren!

It’s a Bizarre Bazaar Life

Since Priya and I moved into our house in the middle of the main bazaar road, I have had the opportunity to truly experience the village life.  Sometimes it can be extremely noisy as the cars and chakras zoom by, honking incessantly and the cows and other assortment of animals moo, bark and howl, attempting to relax on our front porch.  Other times, I’ll be sitting on our front porch, trying to catch a breeze and countless people walk by, slowly, staring at me the whole way as if I were sitting on a parade float, instead of a porch.  While I could do without these experiences, I have come to appreciate my bizarre bazaar life.  We have incredibly friendly, helpful neighbours.  For instance, in our first week here we had countless problems, such as power outages, a leaky stove, and lack of the necessary kitchen utensils, but our neighbours always came to the rescue.  They bring us snacks, invite us over to watch T.V. and lend us anything we ever need.  Our flat neighbours even loaned us a swing for our front porch! And they gave me an incredible gift, a mosquito zapper which looks like a badminton racket.  And they can also really come through when you find yourself in a difficult situation.

On Friday, I travelled to Surat, the city about two hours away by bus.  The U.S. Consulate decided to come to Gujarat for one day, so I took this opportunity to travel the short distance to add additional pages to my full passport.  As with most tasks in India, it took the full day to find the Consulate, request pages, go to the bank and get a draft for the correct amount, and fill out the necessary paper work.  At last, at 6:00pm, I headed to the bus station to travel home.  I waited and waited but the bus never came.  An hour later, I spotted Vikrambhai, the peon at Kadod High School and we waited together for the Kadod bus.  Finally, a bus arrived, over an hour and a half late and by this time quite a crowd formed.  We ran to hop on the bus, pushing our way through a mob.  Somehow, in the midst of the madness, someone had opened my purse and stole my wallet.  When we got on the bus, I realized this and the people sitting near me tried to assist.  My wallet contained my cell phone, about Rs.2000 ($40), my American debit card and a USB drive.  We searched and asked around but to no avail. It was gone.  Thankfully, my passport was in the safe hand of the U.S. Consulate or this situation could have been greatly exacerbated.  Vikrambhai graciously offered to pay for my bus fare and stood near me the whole overcrowded ride home. 

As we reached Kadod, I suddenly became aware of the fact that within minutes everyone in the village would find out what happened.  That is another bonus or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it, of living in a small neighbourhood- everyone knows everyone else’s business.  I was already quite embarrassed and worried they would lecture me so this was the last thing I was ready to deal with.  I wanted to go home, cancel my credit card and climb into bed after a long day.   Vikrambhai walked me home and continued onto the school, which was close to where he lived.  While I was rehashing the store to Priya, she received a call from Amrithbhai, our neighbour who works at the phone booth.  He called to make sure I was okay and offered to report my stolen phone.  Seconds later, Principal Mahida called to make sure I hadn’t lost my passport and to see if I needed anything.  Another five minutes later a couple of other neighbours came over to make sure everything was alright.  No one lectured me; they were merely concerned about what I had lost. Throughout the weekend, I was randomly checked on.  And while I feared the attention I would receive for my unpleasant story, I am so grateful for the comfort and concern of my bazaar friends and neighbours.  And living in a foreign country on the other side of the world, it is vital to have people I can count on in any situation.

We're Getting There

A few weeks ago, Yogeshbhai, my co-teacher, and I made an agreement that if I taught him how to speak English more fluently/accurately, he would teach me Hindi. At the get-go, we had a pretty hard time communicating with each other. For example, I'd say something like, "We should think about how we can get the students more interested in their English lessons." He would stare at me for a couple of seconds then turn back to his work hoping that whatever I just said didn't need a response.

Since then, we've taken huge leaps in our ability to communicate with each other. We plan class lesson plans together and talk about what works and what doesn't. But there's still more work to be done. We had this conversation a few days ago:

Me: What exactly do people mean when they say Muhje samaj pari?
Yogesh: (says something that I just could not understand) Do you understand?
Me: ... No.
Yogesh: I know. (laughs and puts up his hand for a high-five)

Teaching Broken English is Broken English Teaching

For the students of Kadod High School, "essay-writing" does not mean the opportunity to exercise reason, give thoughts expression or otherwise practice the craft of writing. Rather, the teacher hand-copies a passage selected from the "Book of Essays," a slim volume with various editions prepared for each of the secondary grade levels (all are penned and approved by Gujurat's Board of Education). Meanwhile, students copy the passage verbatim into their notebooks. These notebooks are then given to the teacher, who is expected to grade her students solely on the merit of their ability to duplicate.

For a teacher, relegating students' powers of expression to pre-packaged uniformity is (at least, if I am any juge, it certainly ought to be) a pedagogical sin. More than a century has passed since Oscar Wilde wrote in his celebrated De Profundis,

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Putting aside the irony of my own present reliance on "someone else's opinions," I can't help but marvel how from my current station in rural Gujurat, the quotable Mr. Wilde is (unfortunately) as timely as ever.

It would be bad enough if the worst outcome of this exercise in mass-production was the stunting of my students' creative growth and the effective strangulation of their intellectual apertures. Yet, I find it still worse that that the material my students are expected to copy is riddled with grammatical errors and altogheter bodes a lack of fluency and basic compositional coherence.

It would be difficult to overstate the frustration and sadness I felt when I was told that when (remarkably, not "if") the passages from the book are incorrect, I am to content myself in teaching strictly according to what they read. The logic here, I've gathered, is that students are tested according to the book, so that is how they should be taught. Teach them how to use the English language properly, and they may well be penalized for it on their life-making (or breaking) state-sponsored exams. Teach them to pass their exams, and into the workforce they'll carry the mantle of substandard language skills; a legacy which has barred many generations before them from competing with urban Indians for the chance of a better quality of life. Herein lies a profoundly discouraging dialectic.

How can I even hope to effect the quality of English instruction in this community, my community (if only for a year), if I'm to carry out orders from the top-down which, in no uncertain terms, ask me to teach my students that incomplete fragments may pass as sentences; that run-on sentences are perfectly copacetic; that prepositions are optional and capitalization is but a caprice (all of this, coming after I tell them the author's name is, 'George Bernard Show')?

I wonder how Gandhiji might respond to the irksome panegyric which I transcribed for my 11th graders earlier today:

"India got freedom...Mahatma Gandhi helped the backward people...Let's pray to God that another Gandhi of that stature should incarnate in order to liberate our Mother India from the prevailing fear, hunger and corruption."

Not least for the fact that Gandhiji was himself born and bred not terribly far from Kadod, shouldn't we be teaching students that they are the ones who can "liberate" Mother India? That Gandhiji did not fight for the freedom to shackle students to the status quo? That India didn't "got" freedom; it achieved it by daring to demand the possible in spite of what was? That Gandhiji never saw people as 'backward,' only as people? Does it go without mentioning that he could not have seen the day when India's banner would fly over the Red Fort if he hadn't had at his disposal the language skills necessary to make the plight of colonized Indians a priority on the international agenda at the 1931 Round Table Conference (then hosted by the British, in English)?

These are the questions that raced through my mind as, against my every will, the chalk in my hand mechanically traced the lines quoted above. The bell rang. Class was dismissed and my students eagerly adjourned for recess. I waited until every one of the seventy-two of them had made their exit before I erased everything I'd written.

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I'm a big believer that, at least from here on out, the power of ordinary people working together is a force to which Prime Ministers (as much as Kings and Presidents) will always be beholden. International grassroots efforts, from the Red Cross to Al Qaeda, have time and again demonstrated how nonstate actors are changing a world too long divided by political geography. At Nanubhai, we've boldly staked our interest in transforming rural education in India. For those of you reading this from overseas, I want to tell you that on the ground, I believe we're doing the best we can. But Gujurat is in need of educational reform from the top-down. As Gujurat's irrepressible Chief Minister Modi has declared this to be the "Year of Education," I'd encourage you to help us think of ways to hold his administration as accountable for Kadod and Madhi as he must be for Surat and Ahmedabad.

I left school today feeling rather discouraged because I know, we can do better. India can do better. I've seen it. But the notion that 'better is possible' is not the glimmer of hope; it is the beckoning call of work to be done, at least as much by those of us in the classroom as in the halls of Parliament. I will keep you posted as each of us here tries to surmount the formidable challenges that lie ahead.

A Little Handball Hoopla

Friday was a lively day at Madhi High School.  When I stepped foot inside the gate, there were twenty men unloading gravel and spreading it around the school grounds.  I was happy because this meant that I would no longer have to hop over puddles on my way to classes.

When I got upstairs, the students happily greeted me and asked me if I was going to stay for the Handball Tournament that would be starting at 11:00 am.  I agreed to attend and continued walking to the staff room to find out what was going on. The teachers explained that we would have a half day of classes and then the District Handball Tournament would be held on our school grounds.  Several teams from all over the area would be arriving to compete for the title.  This explained the sudden need to maintain the school grounds!

As I taught my classes all morning, my students clearly could not concentrate as they were anxious for the games to begin.  From 10 am onwards, buses entered the school grounds unloading the other high school students.  The last hour of my classes was an uphill battle to keep my students focused.

At 11:00 am sharp, Madhi students rushed home to change into their cool clothes and returned to the school within minutes, not to miss a second of the action.  I was also intrigued because recently I have been craving sports entertainment (my home baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals are competing for first place and every day I hear updates).

After the teams lined up and sang the national anthem, the games began.  The first game was full of action. The handball court is slightly smaller than a basketball court and the teams run from end to end, passing the ball back and forth several times each minute.  It seems incredibly exhausting.  Also, from my observations, I gathered that handball is a combination of soccer, except there's no kicking, rugby and American football, except there's no tackling and netball, a popular African sport.  The match lasts about 30 minutes with over twenty goals or points scored in each game.

The second match included Madhi High School.  It was amazing.  We scored continuously and only allowed one point to the opposing team.  After the excellent home match, I stayed for one more game, in which two girls' teams showed their skills.  While I couldn't stay for the full tournament, I later heard that Madhi won the  tournament! It was a great afternoon full of fun competition and socializing with my friends and students from school! Enjoy the short video!

Kho-Kho Competition

One of my classroom routines in Spoken English class is to ask students what they did last night, and 9 times out of 10, I get the same response: Last night, I played kho-kho. What was this kho-kho? It sounded a lot like a board game to me, so that's just what I assumed it was.

This morning at Spoken English class, a few of the boys told me that the school was having a kho-kho competition and that I should go and watch. "Sure!" I said. I imagined a bunch of students sitting in the auditorium, huddling over boards and game pieces. I'll stay for a few minutes, say hi to my students, and head back to the staffroom, I thought.

After teaching third period, Yogesh, Dave, Apeksha, Adarash, and I headed to the competition. "It's at the third ground," Yogesh told me. The third ground? That's just a huge field by the hostel. Students are playing board games there? On the other side of the bridge connecting the third ground to the rest of the school, we saw a mass of students surrounding a playing field marked with white powder, much like a football field. We got closer to find students in team uniforms running and chasing each other down a line of other squatting team members. Each time a player was tagged out, the audience wooped and hollered. I tried to figure out what the point of the game was by watching, but after a few minutes, I just felt more confused.
I found Dhirenbhai, the computer teacher, standing on the opposite side of the field, so I went over and asked him to explain the rules to me, and it all started to make sense. Here are the rules in a nutshell: How to play kho-kho

We came when the first half of the finals were underway, and the Kadod team, made up mostly of juniors and seniors, were the chasers. The opposing team finished the 7-minute half tagging out 4 members of the opposing team. Here’s a picture taken of the Kadod team during half-time as they kept repeated to themselves over and over again all they needed to do was to prevent 4 of their teammates from being tagged out to win.
The whistle signaled the start of the second half. There was shouting. There was diving. And there were some very close calls. Two Kadod players were tagged out within the first 2 minutes of the half. I could feel a wave of anxiety spread over the onlookers. But then Jaunti, Kadod’s star player, stepped out onto the field. Even in the wet mud, Jaunti was able to maneuver swiftly away from chasers, making split-second decisions to cross over the line to avoid falling into traps. One minute passed, then two, and then three. Out of frustration, players of the other team began lunging at Jaunti desperately. Each time he was able to avoid begin tagged, Kadod fans would jump and cheer to push him on. The final whistle blew, and Kadod was victorious 4-2! All at once, the students rushed the field and lifted the players onto their shoulders. It was an awesome display of school spirit.

With this victory, Kadod will play in the district competitions on August 30th. Since most of you readers are probably new to this sport, you have no other team to root for besides Kadod, so wish them luck!

Happy Birthday Emily Teacher!

On Wednesday, August 4th, I celebrated my birthday at Madhi High School.  I was previously informed that I needed to buy enough candy to distribute to each of my classes as well as the other teachers so on Tuesday evening, I went to the store and bought over 300 pieces of my favourite fruit candy, Falero!

When I woke on Wednesday morning, I decided to go all out and wear my new sari.  I rushed over to our neighbors and politely asked in broken Hindi if she could help me pin and wrap the yards of fabric that make up the outfit. After I was dressed, I grabbed my bag of candy and headed to Madhi.

When I arrived at school I was greeted by all of my Spoken English students wishing me "Happy Birthday".  I was so surprised they knew, but then I remembered they had asked me several weeks earlier when my birthday was. When we went to the classroom, my students formed a circle around me and presented me with gifts.  I proceeded to open them and found that they had gotten me a few figurines, several pieces of jewelry, beautiful cards and various little trinkets.  I was so touched that they made such a big deal of my birthday.

The rest of the day, I handed out candy to anyone who I passed.  Everyone shook my hand and wished me many happy days in this new year. I even handed out candy to all of my friends in the village.

All in all, it was a great birthday.  I ended it with all of the fellows.  We celebrated over Chinese food at our favourite restaurant and mango lassis at the ice-cream shop.

Curious Minds

The best part of my day is when I have my women’s initiative group. The girls in my group are so intelligent, enthusiastic, and curious about life. It’s refreshing to be around people who can’t wait to answer questions or find an answer to one. Their input is always surprising and they say things I sometimes don’t expect.
Today, I had the girls write a question, any question about their body, growing up, puberty, or just anything general that they want to know the answer to. The questions are anonymous to spare the girls any embarrassment later. One of the questions was, “When you were little were you fat or thin?” I smiled at the reflection of the past, “I was chubby. I didn’t outgrow my baby fat and I wasn’t happy because I thought my body would never change but then it did!” One of the girls face lit up relating to what I was saying.
The next question was, “I want to be an engineer, will I be?” It took me a minute to collect myself because I was so touched by this question. These girls want to make something of themselves. They want to be successful but they just don’t know what the process is. Now that I am leaving in a few days I just can’t seem to detach myself from them. I want to fill them with as much information as possible about anything-everything!

Our new Ghar

After many long weeks of living out of our suitcases, Priya, Emily, and I finally moved into our new house. The house looks almost antique with carvings on doors, walls, and cabinets. The first floor has a sitting area, middle room with a swing, and a kitchen. Upstairs there are two more rooms. There is enough room to roam around and scatter things and just be in your own space. My favorite room is the sitting room because the sun light hits the room just right while I sit and read a book on a soft bed.
So far, we’ve had a few adventures with our house some of them include making chai as the first welcome to our house, then making pakora (fried onion in batter), and lastly adopting a cat named Chandler. The name was picked by Priya and Emily who constantly quote the show, “Friends”. We are excited to see how much we can decorate the house and make it our own in the time that we will be there.

Marvelous Mumbai

On Tuesday morning, Priya, Eric, Felicia and I departed the village of Kadod for a two-day trip to Mumbai (Bombay).  We took a bumpy bus to Surat where we caught a train to Mumbai. It was an enjoyable trip and rejuvenating break from the village.

We have all been quite busy since we arrived here seven weeks ago, so the outing was extremely refreshing for all of us.  We are all anxious to get out and see as much of India as we can and we finally had an opportunity to see a new place.  The train ride was fun as we all shared a sleeper cabin.  We each had our own small bed, so we were able to enjoy a short nap in the air-conditioning and we played several games of Monopoly Deal while munching on our favourite snacks of Mango Lays and Tiger Glucose biscuits.

When we arrived to Mumbai after our four-hour train ride, we had several hours to go out and see the city, since on conference started the following morning.  We hopped in a rickshaw and headed to Bandra, one of the more "happening" areas of the city.  We stepped out of the monsoon rain and into Coffee Bean and Tea Leave, a famous American coffee shop and enjoyed a delicious cup of freshly brewed coffee.  After the rains subsided, we headed back outside and towards the local train station, to catch the local line to Colaba, the area home to the Gateway of India and the well-known Taj Hotel.

The local train was quite a different experience from our earlier train ride. No air-conditioning, no seats and no doors! We hung onto the bars and watched the city fly by us as we stuck our heads out of the moving train. After reaching Colaba, we hopped on a bus to Indigo Deli, a must-visit restaurant.  We ordered the most tasty burgers and barbecued chicken sandwiches that we've tasted in months.  We sat back, completely full and so happy to have had a little taste of America. We even ventured down the street to a popular pub and shared an ice-cold pitcher of Kingfisher beer.

The following morning, we woke and had breakfast with Priya's family who lives in the city.  Her aunt is an excellent cook and sent us the conference with full bellies from a hearty breakfast. When we reached the Orchid Hotel, the venue for the conference, we were once again in awe of the extravagance we haven't seen in quite awhile.  Here we were at a five-star hotel with an elegant fountain in the center of the lobby.  We were rushed to the conference room and given big binders of material and shown to our seats.

The conference was held for English teachers in mostly the Mumbai area.  It included information on the TOEFL examination, the exam international students take to be accepted to universities abroad.  The exam tests students in four main areas- reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Throughout the conference, we learned different strategies to stress each area in the classroom. Although we are only teaching standard 8 and standard 9, students who are not ready for college, we do target these main areas in our Spoken English classes, so the presentation was extremely helpful. In addition, we learned about the exam content and how we can prepare our students if they ever decide they want to study abroad in the future.  The key speaker, Emilie Pooler, from the United States, did an excellent job of giving us examples and interactive activities throughout the workshop.  We even had the opportunity to talk to her personally over a scrumptious buffet lunch.  We asked her several questions about ideas we could try in our Spoken English classes. She offered many great suggestions.




The conference ended at 5:00pm and we hopped in a taxi and sped back to the train station to make the 6:00 Express train back home.  Luckily, we arrived 20 minutes early and conveniently there was a McDonald's across the street.  We enjoyed one last taste of western food before a train ride back to the village.  All in all, it was a great experience in the big city.

Spoken English Charades

Eric and I teach supplemental Spoken English classes before and after school. Here, we're using a game of charades to teach verb conjugations in the present progressive tense. Listen closely and you can hear students yelling out, "She is dancing!, She is flying!, etc." Eric and I often use games to teach lessons, the idea being that learning - be it about pronunciation, grammar or syntax - doesn't have to be about monotonous, rote memorization. Although that's something we take for granted in America, it really seems to be a breath of fresh air for Kadod's classrooms.

"Chuck Doom Doom"

I have to say that when it rains in NYC, the rain does not put a smile on my face. Traveling just makes me annoyed and by the time I get to my destination I just don’t want to deal with the rest of the day. However, my hands somehow seem to reach for the touch of the monsoon rain in Kadod. Lately, all it has been doing is raining. Luckily, I brought my awesome rain boots with me to India and boy do people get a kick out of them! I pretty much get teased everyday but they happen to be great conversation starters, so I’ve come to appreciate them.
Today, the one day when I don’t wear them, it does not stop raining. I’m not talking about a light drizzle with a chance of humidity, nope, I’m talking about a crazy down pour where you might as well leave your umbrella home because you’re gonna’ get soaked anyway. Priya and I had just finished visiting an elderly couple in the village, when it was continously pouring outside. We held each other to try and fit under her small umbrella but nothing prepared us for how soaked our feet and legs would get from puddles that were big enough to swim in. By the time we got to Kadod High School, we were drenched, and then we went wild. We began dancing and singing “Chuck Doom Doom” in the rain failing at the classic, “Bollywood Movie Rain Dance”. I had been looking forward to getting completely soaked in the rain and finally the time had come. You’re not officially experiencing India unless you dance in the rain like no one’s watching

Madhi Mendhi

Today was an interesting day in the village of Madhi.  It was the annual Mendhi (Henna) Competition!  Furthermore, yesterday, Madhi English Medium School had its competition and the two winners were boys, which is slightly unusual as mendhi is most commonly practiced by girls.

Monday morning, bright and early I was approached by a student almost immediately after walking in the gates at Madhi High School.  She was begging me to let her use me as her model for the Mendhi Competition which was to be held on Thursday.  Before I could answer, another ten girls swarmed me and asked if they use one of my arms.  Although I was still unsure as to what I was agreeing to, I accepted the first offer from my student, Sweta.  Later, in the staff room, the teachers explained to me that every year there is a Mendhi Competition and the girls prepare their designs for months. 

The competition, which took place this afternoon, was quite the exciting event.  During the last two periods, all of the participants gathered in the hall and sat on the floor, facing their partners.  One hour was given to complete a design on one arm, from the elbow down. Tomorrow, the winners will be announced!  Check out the video and pictures of Felicia and I.