Top Ten Things I've Learnt So Far In India

India is very noisy.

In the morning, you are woken up by the shrill cries of birds and seemingly never-ending honks of thousands of cars, rickshaws, and motorbikes as they rush down the dusty streets to another day of work.

During the night, the wild dogs rule the streets. Rail-thin and sorry-looking during the day, they team together and form vicious packs as the light starts to fade. The air is filled with their howls as they fight over food, over territory, and over sex. From the comforts of my bed I listen to their escapades: wincing when a dog comes at the brunt end of a larger pack and comes off badly, marvelling at their musical howls, and overall just being glad that I am inside and not out.

When I am in the Deep Griha office the air is filled with the cries of children, the honking of rickshaws, and constant construction. Outside of the shattered windows I have an excellent view of the daily battles between birds and the antics of our neighbours, who seem to have endless supplies of laundry to wash and whip against the walls with resounding smacks.

Trucker Stop!

So when Jemma, Becky, and I hiked up to Parvati Hill, you can imagine how much we enjoyed the silence.

We walked up through a forest, enjoying the fragrant foresty-smell in the air, before reaching the temple located at the tip of the hill.  From there- pure bliss.  You don’t realize just how much noise there is in India until you enjoy complete silence (well… not complete; you can still hear horns honking, but the noise is quiet and far-off).

Climbing to the top of the temple, you are rewarded with a light breeze and sweeping views of Pune. The city is absolutely enormous.

  

Parvati Temple View

Hindu temple on Parvati Hill

I find myself going through different phases of work at Deep Griha. The first week was nothing but the feeling of being completely overwhelmed- with the noise, with the amount of people, with the smells, the colours and the food. Everything was new and exciting.  In the second week I felt hyper aware of how much I stuck out, and how many social faux-pas and mistakes I made.

Colourssssss

I feel  like now, settled in to my third week, feeling like I've found my niche in the slum community, might be a good time to make a list of all the different things that I have learned in India. Top ten things I learned since being here (also can be interpreted as: my stupidest mistakes).

10. Keeping my toothbrush inside its travel container

This was actually a well-deserved consequence for being an idiot, I think.  India is hot and humid. My toothbrush case is wet and dark. Perfect breeding grounds for maggots.  Lots and lots of maggots.

Also, should this happen to you, do not spend time examining said maggots with interest. It is not conducive to a good night's sleep.

9. Pay attention to where the rickshaw driver is going

I've had a few rickshaw drivers blatantly go around in circles around the block several times. Or take the longer way round to my destination.  Learn your routes (when you encounter a particularly great driver, ask him what the best routes are and he will be more than happy to oblige). 

The first time I took a rickshaw by myself, I noticed that my meter read twice the distance it was supposed to.  This, again, was pretty well-deserved. Constant vigilance!

The next time it happened, I was delighted to be able to tell the driver off so that I could pay the correct amount.

8. Getting my clothes tailored instead of buying them ready-made

I spent the first week in my one pair of jeans and shirt, but it was completely worth it. The clothes I have are tailored to fit me exactly, and were cheaper than the complete salwar kameez suits that you can buy (but they are only cheaper after some intense haggling with the tailors and the fabric stores). You can mix and match fabrics instead of buying sets.

7. Learning to not care about flea bites

I was so excited to get my first salwar kameez that I put it on the moment I got home and wore it for the day. After the first hour, I felt a little itchy. By the end of the day, I had huge red bumps all over my legs. I soaked my clothes in boiling hot water then thoroughly washed them, and learnt my lesson- I was itchy for days after.

Flea bites are a part of life here. There's so many dogs and fabric stores that I imagine India must be a haven for them. For the first few days it bothered me- the thought of little tiny bugs eating at my skin was not a pleasant one. But not caring is way better than the alternative- wasting water to wash my clothes more frequently.

6. Haggle for everything

Rickshaw rides, food, clothes, cloth, toiletries, technology (I managed to negotiate my phone price down to 35% off!), jewelry...  you name it, you can haggle for it. I've seen women get hundreds to even thousands of rupees knocked off the price of gold and diamonds. 


For the longest time, I couldn't bring myself to haggle. I hated arguing with a stranger. I've adopted the 'pretend like you don't care about the item, then ask for a discount for buying a second item' strategy. If I'm really being ripped off, I've learnt to ignore their yelling and screaming and just walk away. A few minutes later, they will generally always come running out of the store. "Okay, okay. For you, local price!"


5. When you are out with locals, be prepared to get more stares


For the most part they're pretty harmless, and I find the more courageous stare-ers entertaining. But they seem to get more aggressive when I'm with locals. Apparently hanging around with Indians means that I'm 'fair game' for others. 


I learnt how to say "What would your mother think?" in Hindi and Marathi. I imagine it must be a pretty rude thing to say, so I only pull it out in more extreme cases. Other than the words 'sorry' and 'thank you', it is definitely the most useful thing I've learnt to say so far. 


I also had to learn to be clear that the attention doesn't bother me- some people (men in particular) are quick to tell off the people staring. A few times, it amounted to shouting contests and violent gestures. Definitely a good moment to pull out the 'your mom' card.

4. I really, really should have brought a laptop and phone


I finally broke down and bought a phone. You can't get a hotel room without a phone number. The inital plan was to give the Deep Griha phone number, and friends and family from internet cafes, but even writing a blog post at an internet cafe is difficult enough! As a white woman sitting at an internet cafe alone, I attract a considerable amount of attention. People surreptitiously try to peek at what I'm writing, and comment quietly to each other which of my photos they like best.

3. Bringing anti-malarial pills was a huge mistake. Also, bringing a flash light was the smartest thing I did.

Pune is not in the malaria zone. Although other parts of India I may be travelling to will require malaria pills, I did not need a hundred malaria pills (but at least I won't have to buy them for my next trip!).

Flashlight was definitely the most useful thing I brought. Power outages happen frequently. The always seem to happen when I am in the shower.

2. Spend more time out in the slums getting to know the locals, and less time in the office doing work

Now that I'm in my third week here I feel as if, in a way, I have been accepted by the staff.  One of the programs here, the DISHA program (HIV/Aids awareness, education, and support), involves some of the local ladies walking around in the communities, educating their area about HIV/AIDS and offering support to those infected. They also help these people out with more everyday problems- what to do about pains and aches, educating about family planning, teaching the use of condoms,etc. They are some of the strongest and most resourceful women I have ever met.

For the first two weeks at Deep Griha, I spent a lot of time doing office work, with breaks in the creches in between (where children from 6 months to 5 years old stay during the day). As much as I knew that the work I was doing was important, I couldn't help but feel like I was missing out of seeing the true India by sitting in an office working on grants.

So I made friends with the DISHA ladies. I started to appear in their English classes to help out. I documented their various trips to HIV-prevalent populations. Within a few days they truly made me feel like I was one of their own.

Whenever I go to a different country, or an area where a different language is spoken, I am always interested in seeing how people pronounce my name.  In French, for example, it is 'Eezer'. In India, 'Heather' seems to be unpronounceable. This was, as the DISHA ladies pointed out, "a very grave problem". To solve it, they gave me a new name. I am no longer Heather. My name in India has been changed to Pinky.

The DISHA ladies take it in turns now to take me with them when they do their rounds in the slum near the Deep Griha head office. They introduce me to their neighbours, their friends, their family. They patiently translate everyone's stories to the best of their ability so that I can communicate with the people who live here. Learn about their hopes, their dreams, and their realities. Answer their questions about my life.

Now, when I walk out in to the slums, I can hear the cry of "Piiinkkkkyyyyy!". I'm slowly being accepted in to their everyday lives as we get used to each other.

1. Not planning to spend more time in India


The culture, the people, the colours, the noise... India has a way of making you fall in love with it. I know I'm going to be coming back again, and again, and again.

In case you wanted to write to me... no pressure :-)

Deep Griha Society Cultural Centre

A-8 K Tatya Tope Housing Society

Wanowrie, Pune 411 040

Maharashtra

INDIA 

We live in an extremely nice part of Pune. Every building has a solar panel, and most of the families have cars in addition to motor bikes. Aside from the solar panel/car thing, the homes at first seemed to my inexperienced eye to be similar to other areas in Pune- small living space, relatively dirty (when you compare it to Canada!), with wild dogs, cows, goats, and pigs running around. The inside of each home is, as I’ve found to be typical so far of a house in India, spotlessly clean but not really decorated. There is garbage everywhere on the streets.

Pretty typical forest/side of the road

But the roads are paved here, there are more gardens, the parks are cleaner, and there are significantly more shady areas (the more shade the neighbourhood has, the more expensive it is generally).

The Deep Griha house is run by a woman we call Auntie. But we mostly interact with Munda, the door-minder... who has sort of appointed herself to be our mother. Going out at night usually results in hand-wringing and cries of “be back by ten-thirty, understand? Teeeeennn thiirrrtttyyy”. When we are out, she worries. When we (aka I) do something stupid, she is unafraid to chastise us.


Becky, Jemma, and I got back from our first shopping expedition on Saturday, glowing with excitement. We had gone off on our own and survived! We had haggled (we were terrible at it), and bought beautiful cloth (to take to the tailors and get made into a few salwa kameezes for a pricey $4), and taken a rickshaw without falling off or dying. We had eaten our first non-Deep Griha food without consequences. We were on top of the world.

Left to right: Me, Jemma, Becky

Munda was waiting for us when we got back.

"Oooooh! So pretty, very pretty!" She exclaimed when we proudly showed her our purchases. "Kitne hai?" (how much?).
"100 rupees." (About $2.25)
"Noooo!!!!" She wailed, shouting in her distress, wringing her hands. "Too expensive! Oh oh oh! Very bad job!"

Munda picked up the next purchase: a gorgeous quilt Gemma had bought. "Kitne hai?"
 "200 rupees"

"SO EXPENSIVE!"


Later, when I crept down to the kitchen to get a glass of water, she pounced on me. I was to haggle better next time! I was to be insistent and crush every extra rupee out of the price. Munda was so concerned, so worried, that we were being ripped off- she is such a good representation of most of the people we have met here. These people are determined that we enjoy our stay, that our trip remains hassle-free and, most importantly, that no one ever rips us off. The other minuscule percentage seems to see dollar signs popping out of me every time I enter their radar. And I can’t really blame them- as a white person walking around with a nice backpack and a camera, I must represent wealth.

Walking down our neighbourhood- our house is just to the left of that huge truck

Morning starts at 7:00. I wake up (this is involuntary mind you—it’s when Pune traffic starts and the street dogs are at their loudest!) and either go for a walk or try and brush up on my Marathi and Hindi. The cultural centre (where I stay) usually makes us breakfast and dinner, but I’ve taken to opting out of both. I get my one portion of fruit in the morning –I buy pomegranates at a market nearby- and the lunch portions at Deep Griha are so huge that I don’t need to eat for the rest of the day. For many people lunch at Deep Griha is the one time they get to eat, so the food portions you get are enormous. The lunch ladies also like to sneak in an extra spoonful of food, or another chapatti, if you’re not paying attention!

Munda in particular always seems to worry that I'm not eating enough. She still makes extra food for me, and checks to make sure I'm eating enough at dinner time.  I get a good telling off if I eat less than two chapattis!

The food we eat is amazing. Chapattis are kind of like bread-y pancakes… there is no other way to describe them! We always get mounds of rice covered in a liquid curry, and then some kind of vegetable curry on the side. You eat with your right hand, rolling your curry into a ball. I’m absolutely terrible at it, though now that I’m on week 2 in India I’m getting less food on the floor/my face and more in my stomach.  I had my first experience feeding the children today though, and that was a disaster. Putting food in the mouth of a 6-month-old is way different than putting food in my own mouth!



Deep Griha was founded in 1975 by Dr. Neela Onawale and her husband. Neela, now over 67, is still here every single day (!) running Deep Griha. She left Wednesday for a month-long trip to the States and the UK to visit various donors.  To my surprise, she actually seemed to recognize me when I briefly saw her on- hugging me and asking how my parents were. Her memory must incredible… she hasn’t seen us for 10 years!­

Neela’s project initially started with her feeding children in a nearby slum from her own pocket. The project has since expanded to include schools, nutrition centers, HIV education, and women's empowerment programs in three large slums in Pune. There are also two large centers located in villages outside of Pune. One, the City of Child, was built to give children a place to stay, proper nutrition, a safe play area, and counseling. The other center, the City of Knowledge, works to combat the lack of ­­­education in rural areas. It provides children living in rural areas with an opportunity to get city-level knowledge that otherwise would never be available to them.

Both the City of Child and City of Knowledge are reasonably far from Pune, so I haven't had the chance to visit yet. City of Child is far enough away that you usually stay there for a few days. I'm making plans to stay at City of Child for a few weeks in about a month.


I had plans to visit City of Knowledge on Thursday, but decided at the last minute not to go. Sahara, a sister organization to Deep Griha, had been nominated for an HIV/AIDS research funding program from the States. They desperately needed someone to write up a concept paper detailing their research proposal. Gemma and I stayed behind to come up with some sort of plan- everyone working for an NGO here is extremely overworked, the people of Sahara being no different. They gave Gemma an extremely basic idea of what the research they were doing before running off to yet another meeting.

It was fascinating to write a charity research proposal- when you do it, you have to be able to provide budgets, staff numbers, huge piles of statistics detailing the number of people you treat, success rates, mortality rates, etc.

We weren’t given any of these numbers, so I spent a very interesting (and slightly depressing) afternoon looking over old Deep Griha and Sahara budgets, research grants, and statistics in order to get a better idea of the kind of numbers Sahara would be dealing with. Both organizations are extremely understaffed, and their budgets are tiny in comparison to some of the smaller organizations I had worked or volunteered with in Canada. And yet they deal with three times the number of patients. Doing this proposal gave me a real appreciation of the huge challenges that Deep Griha, and other organizations similar to it, face.

The view down Rametikidi, one of the education centers

Wednesday I enjoyed my first experience in the crèches. The crèches were set up in the slums for younger children whose parents both needed to work in order to make ends meet. It was obvious which kids were newer to the program than others- their limbs were emaciated, their stomachs bloated… tell-tale signs of malnutrition. Some of the children I played with probably as old as two, and yet they weighed and looked no older than a year old. They were extremely cute and extremely naughty- some of them didn’t know what to make of me! They climbed on to my lap, pulled at my curly hair, and peed on my clothes. But at least I didn’t step in poo like Sneha, a local volunteer.

Children in the creches... sorry about the terrible picture! My memory card got deleted so I'm left with pretty slim pickings

Sneha had told me about a movie, Salaam Bombay, showing for free at the National Film Archives of India. ­The other volunteers were exhausted, so I went to see the movie alone. I actually remembered to take my shoes off before entering the cinema, and then found a place to stand in the movie theater before the previous movie had finished. About 20-30 people were standing there as well, waiting patiently for the movie to end. The movie theater itself was packed- people sat up and down in the aisles, and stood up against the walls. It was a very long movie, so I can’t imagine standing was very comfortable! I sat in the aisle with Sneha and tried to hide after a few well-intentioned but still uncomfortable attempts made by people to give me their seat.

The movie was excellent. I think it has been nominated for the Cannes Film Festival. Should you get chance to see it- it has English subtitles- I highly recommend it. Bring tissues- it’s about the life of a street child in Mumbai.


Since arriving in Pune I’ve been dying to get the chance to ride on the back of a motorcycle. Sneha offered to drive me half way home, and I jumped at it. Looking back, this was probably an extremely stupid thing to do because of the whole no-one-wears-a-helmet thing, but I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. The traffic is crazy, but I’ve yet to see an accident.

Every few blocks we would encounter a particularly large pothole and I would bounce up a few inches in the air- it was a lot of fun. I told Sneha that I wished that I had a motorcycle, but I would never be allowed to get one because my parents think it’s too dangerous. She replied that she wished she had a bicycle, but there’s no way she would be allowed to get one because her parents think it’s too dangerous! Funny how the world works.

Oh my Ganesh!... I'm actually updating

Arriving in India felt like plunging in to sauna.

By the time I had gone through customs, I felt as if I was dripping puddles of sweat.  All of a sudden, wearing a rain jacket during monsoon season felt like a very bad idea.

Going through security at the airport was a frazzling experience. People seemed to be very reluctant to both hold me up and talk to me.  The immigration officer gave my passport a cursory glance before waving me through.  I lined up for customs, but was quickly pulled out and pushed through without a single explanation.

Everyone seemed to be so keen in getting me out as fast as possible that they forgot to fill out the paperwork I needed to get in to India.  I was stopped by a soldier on my way out of the airport and asked to show him my customs papers. “Customs papers?” I asked, intimidated. The soldier waved an example of the form in front of my face. 

“Custom papers! Like Thiiiiiiiiiiis!” He shouted

I had to admit that I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about.  After a minute of staring at me silently, he shrugged and motioned me through.

That was weird.

Prakash, the Deep Griha driver, drove at 100 km and hour with one finger on the wheel, his head bobbing and free fist pumping to the latest Bollywood hit song.  Every couple seconds he would honk the horn furiously with his free hand.  This honk could mean anything from:

“I’m passing you within a few centimeters of your car, okay?”

To:

“Pedestrians, watch out! I’m driving on the sidewalk because I don’t feel like waiting 2 seconds in traffic”

And:

“Don’t pass me! If you do this, I will swerve in front of you and almost take off your bumper in the process.”

Also, my personal favourite:

“I’m going to squeeze in between you two enormous trucks, so don’t move an inch because you will crush me!”

The car horn was also extremely useful for the intersections that I saw where over six (SIX!) main roads of traffic intersected.  There were no traffic lights.  It was just a free-for-all of people turning left, right, going straight, doing u-turns, and disregarding lane rules in general. If there was space on the road for you, it didn’t matter what side you were on. There were also people walking everywhere: in the middle of the highway, in the middle of city roads, and crossing the various streets and intersections (since there are no traffic lights of any sort, you just kind of wing it to get across the roads- a hair-raising experience for me... locals often gather to watch me cross!).

To keep my mind off the death-defying stunts that Prakash was pulling, I kept my eye on the scenery outside.  Banana trees, coconuts trees, and the smell of spices, pee, and incense wafted through the air.

It was really, really nice to be back.

I’ve only been here a few days, but if feels like I’ve lived here forever.  India really and truly feels like home to me right now. 

Sunday was the ending of a two-week long Ganesh festival, and the locals were gearing up for large partying. Each block had made a float composed of the various Ganesh statues from each household, where they were then taken during a large street-wide celebration to be placed in the river (this apparently has something to do with Ganesh's origins). 

I woke up at nine to find the house -literally- shaking from the music blaring outside. Who knew that Justin Bieber's songs could actually sounds bearable once they had been remixed Bollywood-style? One of the volunteers, Becky, and I went for a walk in the morning, but were disappointed by the lack of festivities.  Everyone was very excited to see us (but mostly our cameras!), and many of the Ganesh floats were blaring out music and covered in offerings. But otherwise there seemed to be very little happening.

 We were dying to go to Lakshimi Road, where several hundred thousand people go to celebrate the sinking of the biggest Ganesh, but had been expressively forbidden by Munda, our live-in caretaker who also assumes the role of mother hen, from going (more on Munda in another post!).  I think if she had had her way, we would have been locked up in our rooms and chained to the house to keep us from going.

So we waiting until Munda had left for church for the day, and planned our jail break. 

Lakshimi Road was out of the question- with the hundreds of thousands of people there, we were bound to get lost.  A way to be part of the festivities came to us during lunch: people had gathered outside in the street to being the block festival, and the children were chanting and waving for us to come outside and dance. 

It seems that there is some sort of stigma attached to women dancing- the men danced, grinding and jumping up against each other in a way that none of us volunteers had ever seen before.  But the women stayed off at the side. Good girls, it seems, do not dance in the street. 

Wanting to be prudent, we joined the women at the side of the street, but were pushed in to the arms of the waiting children.  "Dance! Dance!"... everyone seemed to be truly thrilled that we had come down to join their celebration.  Once we busted out our obviously extremely good dance moves, some of the older women even joined in to show us how it was done. 

                                                      Starting to be surrounded by the locals!

Everyone was extremely excited to have us there. Celebratory sweets were pushed in to our hands, and the children took turns clinging on to us. We live in a very well-to-do neighbourhood, so everyone immediately whipped out their cellphones and cameras to take our pictures. Kids were falling over themselves to give us our first Indian sweets, invite us for dinner, and show us their homes.  People left when we arrived and soon came back with their friends and family. Within a few hours of us joining in, there were about a hundred people sitting on the sides watching the three crazy white girls dance. Jemma, the other volunteer, videotaped Becky and I dancing with the locals.  It's going to be posted on Becky's blog- I'll put up the link when I get it later! In one of the videos you can see a man (quite drunk) dancing suggestively behind us, and then being told off by the women. Everyone was determined that we would enjoy ourselves, and the grandmothers looked out for us as if we were their daughters- one of them even slapped a man who she thought came too near me.

It took over five hours for the float to be towed the half a kilometer the the nearby river.  Finally, once we were ready to collapse from the exhaustion of dancing and smiling non-stop, our hands were run through flames and then we tossed invisible air behind us. The children dotted our foreheads with red dye, and they gave us more sweets.  I have a feeling that they were feeding us from the offerings, and I really hope that by accepting them we weren't committing some sort of grave offense... 

It was an extremely enjoyable experience- one that I don't think would ever happen in Canada.  

We retreated quickly as soon as the ceremony was over- although everyone was extremely friendly, they were all a little too forceful in their attempts to get us over to see their houses and eat their food.

Now that the street festival was over, we looked forward to a little peace and quiet!  But as soon as the Ganesh on our street was placed in the river, the street next to ours took their turn to come by, and then the next after that, and after that. And these streets seemed to be extremely determined to outdo all of their neighbours. Some of them had hired live bands, others had dozens of men flawlessly playing the drums in unison.  All of them played Bollywood music as loud as possible on speakers that were taller than me.  Even after our neighbourhood had finished, we could hear the far-off pounding of music from other neighbourhoods until six o'clock in the morning. 

I have a feeling that this is not the last time I'm going to see many of these people. We seem to have captured the interest of the locals for now!

Heather

ETA: The address to Becky's blog http://beckyholly.wordpress.com/

I'm off!! (Almost...)

Go to India.

This has been a persistent idea at the back of my head since I graduated high school.  I was dying to see a world outside of what I knew. To embrace another culture and learn a few life lessons. I wanted to do something that I had always been a little too scared to do alone:  grab a backpack, buy a plane ticket to a country, and head off with only a general idea of what I was doing.

At around Christmas time, in my second year of university, I started wondering what to do next. I didn't feel like I was getting much out of my ever-changing degree.  I was torn between two completely different fields- psychology and medicine. I was disinterested in school and wanted to do something that felt more meaningful.

It seemed like the perfect moment to take some time off.

The primary goal of my trip is volunteer work. I have ties with an organization called Deep Griha in Pune, India, where my family had volunteered during our trip around the world.

I'm spending a minimum of two months volunteering, and then a month and a half travelling around India.  I had initially planned on travelling around Asia a bit- until I did some preliminary trip reading. In a month and a half of backpacking, I would barely scrape the surface of India.

India has the oldest inhabited city in the world. It is home to more mosques than any other country. It contains the most significant religious sites for Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainsim, and Sikhism. Its cities contain a mish mash of different historical cultural influences from across the globe- from the Turks, to the Afghans, to the British. The Bollywood industry is bigger than the film industries of Canada and the United States combined.  It has the world's second largest population (1.1 billion people) but has twice the number of people per square kilometer than China. It is home to over 1,600 dialects and, soon, will be home to half the world's poor as well.  It is also home to "the Big Four"- four extremely poisonous and rather common snakes, and over 600 species of tarantula. You can find mountains, deserts, rain forests, and stunning coral reefs here.  

Overall, a pretty interesting place to visit.

I can't wait to get there.