2007 July « India That Magical Place

Autos are fantastic

July 30, 2007 at 2:35 pm (Who do you trust?)

I have included a photo of myself- Just incase you forgot what I look like…(wink!)

I have a horrible hangover today- really nasty. I think it’s because I was sick for a few days last week, so I haven’t been eating much. I have to say I’m beginning to tire of constantly getting sick. I spent one night creeping past Kath in different states of undress, due to my rising temperature. At one point in the night I was lying on the cool tiles in the bathroom and I was so tempted to start moaning ( I felt like I was dying) but I thought that just might freak Kath out. I’m going to the Homeopath this week. Hmmm back to the hang-over, so today I’m feeling really nasty and then I discovered that I’m missing 4200 Rupees. Eeeek! I made a resolve to try and go easy on my spending and I loose 4200-rupees. Silly me, I just feel really sad/disappointed about it, it’s gone from my purse and I have no idea when it walked- I just have to be more careful with my things. I have my doubts about one of my friends, but it’s not really what you want to accuse your friends of- stealing. Little things seem to go missing from the room during her visits. I had shrugged these off but she was alone in the room with the purse and then the money was gone. I’d not said anything and another of my friends started asking me whether she’d been around. He has his suspicions about her, so he’s made it his responsibility to resolve the matter. I felt very deflated after the whole thing.

Achint’s plan:-
Get really stoned with friend in question, leave his wallet with a large sum of money in it sitting beside her. After awhile he will excuse himself and go to the bathroom, leaving the wallet and his stuff behind. Then come back and bust her. He’s going to wait for a bit so that the drama of my disappearing money passes. “Crafty” I say, things here just seem so melodramatic- though the problem with stolen money, it’s something very hard to prove. Life’s not dull.

So the joys of this week-

I have the room to myself all for one whole week hooray! Kath has gone North to visit some friends. I think it is very healthy to have a break from each other.

We had the return date on the weekend, that was lots of fun. I went out to dinner with a ceramics student- Vinay. He was very lovely, but his english wasn’t so good. It is very exhausting conversing when there is a language barrier and you are constantly repeating yourself. Then it was dancing with my friends in the rec room. Indians sure know how to move.

One evening I climbed with a Achint on the roof of the boys hostel 4 stories up and watched the monkeys playing in the trees, it was amazing. Monkeys are soooooooooo cool.

Madhubani Workshop- we spent 10 days learning the Madhubani traditional painting style. About twenty people from a village in Bihar were there for the workshop. They traveled 4000kms to participate. Madhubani painting is dying out, it’s a family tradition which is phasing out as people just aren’t interested in taking it up. They were taught different printing techniques so that they could mass produce designs. Every design tells a story and these have never been recorded before, so the workshop documented the stories along side the pictures- they are going to make publications and all the royalties go to the village people. Craft preservation. It was interesting being part of it, though we were sort of bystanders. The village people were shy around us at first, but then they became quite vocal about what we were and weren’t doing right, there was a lot of smiling and nodding. I have mixed opinions about NID’s attempt at craft preservation. The works that were produced in the workshop on a whole were nowhere near as good as the works they’d previously done. It was a sort of bastardisation of the craft. Because of the material/tools they were given to work with here, much of the detailing in the paintings was gone and that is the wonderful thing about Madhubani paintings- the fine detail. These were just my observations. That is only for this particular workshop, I’ve read about different craft initiatives NID has been apart of and I am very impressed by their involvement with different poverty stricken villages.

I am drawing fish with the moon in the center- it’s meant to be a reflection. Fish are painted inside wedding tents as a fertility charm. So I have produced a lovely fertility charm to take home.

This man’s work was amazing, he actually stopped producing stuff for the workshop and continued on with his own work, incredibly intricate. The picture he is holding up tells the story of a god who chopped her head off to feed her hungry friends who had come to visit.

A local lady turned up in the painting workshop Kath and I are doing and demanded we come to her house. “You come to my house, I pick you up on Saturday!”. Saturday came and sure enough we were picked up, but rather than go to her house we were taken on a textiles factory tour. It was a day I wished there was a video camera trailing me. So surreal. Her nephews own factories, we went to two small scale factories where the material was printed by hand and then to a large machine factory. There were six of us packed into the auto plus the driver, her three children had come along. I love traveling in autos especially when they are packed, we were speeding through the back streets, venturing into a part of the city I”d never been to before, rain was gushing in and I had the giggles. You go with the world and it takes you crazy places. My stomach even settled for the occasion. We were given material as a gift which ever ones took our fancy and forced to eat. Great pleasure was taken in forcing us to eat the richest cake I’ve eaten here. The whole episode was just so funny. We are going back to take some video footage of the factories, it’s just so fascinating- we were privileged to be given a glimpse into another world. I love being hijacked because you just don’t know what’s going to happen next!

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Me, NID and getting in with the Kids in the Hood!

July 23, 2007 at 8:23 pm (Party Fun times)

When I ventured out of my room it was with a resolve to meet new people. Date week had begun and I received a broom, delivered to the classroom, which read- “Fiona, you sweep me off my feet!”.

Date week is designed so that the students mix, a form of ’social interaction’ which is fun. The first week it happens a senior dates a junior, sending them anonymous letters and gifts all week. It is the junior’s responsibility to reply to the letters and then on the weekend you go on a date. It’s not a romantic thing, just cheesy and fun. Which is what I’m all about. The second gift was a boomerang which was passed back and forth between us with jokes on it, and so this went on all week, and then we got into an origami competition. It was really fun because you had no idea who was sending them and all week I had random people come and me ask if I knew who my date was. The return letters you hand to anyone and somehow it manages to finds it’s way to your date. It was such a cool ice breaker. The world was working with me to introduce me to new people. My date was a lovely young boy Prevar, a third year product designer. He took me to a lovely restaurant ‘Curries’ and then out for ice-cream where we met up with a group of NID students. Then it was back to the campus for a sing-a-long and a dance party. The students are all from different regions in India and the regions all have their own dialects, traditions and customs. The sing-a-longs consisted of students singing traditional songs from their home towns. I find this sort of thing really fascinating, India is so rich in culture, I was paranoid they were going to ask me to sing- they hinted at it, but I brushed it off. Ha, I’m tone deaf when it comes to singing and the only ‘Australian’ song I can think of is the national anthem. Really, no one wants to hear my out of key version of the national anthem. Where is my national pride? The next evening I was taken to the Cinema to watch a Southern Indian film, out of eleven of us there was only one guy who spoke the language and there were no sub-titles. “Fiona for a truly Indian cinematic experience you have to make noise and lots of it!” and they sure meant it whooping, yelling, laughing, whistling- they went crazy. Little meek me sat there for half the film too shy to make a sound, but by the end of it I could yell like the best of them. The film was in excess of 3 hours so I had some time to warm into it. At home I often talk at the TV, so really it’s just an extension of that.

Though I dissed the ‘ragging’ in an earlier post I accidently found myself at the centre of it. We have been editing with post graduate film students and they had to perform a cross-dressing play based on Titanic for the senior students. I was made the ocean ( I did volunteer for the role- part of my new ‘I should try everything approach to campus life’- but I had no idea what I was getting myself into).

We were lined up and yelled at for a bit, then we had to do a catwalk and introduce a student whom we didn’t know. I was a little shocked at what I had subjected myself too, and the seniors were shocked that I got involve, so I was given a little grace when it came to being yelled at. The object of the exercise was to entertain and simply me being there was entertaining enough for them. The students were SOooooooooo embarrassed/body conscience about cross dressing, it was hilarious, though I felt a little uncomfortable watching their discomfort. One guy had to leave because it was all too much for him. For me I’m an outsider so I was given special treatment, plus I really don’t care what they think of me- so I don’t mind making a fool of myself. Once the formalities or maybe I should term it initiation ceremonies were over It was party time. A film Student only affair- smuggled in booze and bad Bollywood dance music. Getting involved I didn’t find it as horrific as I did as a bystander in my first week at NID. You bonded with your peers, laughing about what you were being subjected too and once you did it you gained entry into the seniors world- thus the party. I suspect though the driving force for most of the juniors was the prospect of booze at the end. The things people do for a drink!

Swimming lessons and Cheap Booze!

Finally after a month we made it out of the city of Ahmedabad for a beach holiday. It was so refreshing to get out of the city. The over night bus trip was crazy- we spent the whole night airbourne, as we were over the back tire and there was very little to no suspension.

I was shocked to learn out of our four friends we went away with, only one could swim. The weekend was spent in the pool teaching them how to swim, drinking cheap alcohol (which was legal because we were in an independent territory, cheap because there were no alcohol taxes- You guessed it a bit of a haven for NID students!) and driving around the city on scooters. My one freakout moment was one afternoon when we went to the beach and it was the roughest surf I’ve been in for as long as I remember. Swimming after a day full of alcohol with a group who can’t swim and no life guards. No dramas, no deaths, no near deaths, Fiona stop panicking! I built a mini sandcastle in the bathroom with the sand that came out of my clothes!

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Living on Curds and rice

July 18, 2007 at 7:03 pm (Meltdowns)

By popular demand (this one’s for you Soumitri) I have written about my Week Three Meltdown.

Three weeks in and already I have been quite sick. I’ve spent two days in bed, actually I quite enjoy the solitude. It’s just me the bed and an intimate relationship with the toilet bowl. As a result of being sick I have developed an acute dislike for the mess food (not a lot of variety, just curries in varying shades of orange), and have resorted to living on rice and curds. The food here is rich, laden with oil and spicy, there’s a theory amongst the students that the guys who run the mess are making a mint and by serving shit food- people aren’t likely to eat much, thus they are racking it in. For sick people there is a ‘special’ menu which I tried out- something green and mushy and lukewarm bland mashed potatoes YUM (note sarcasm!).

I’m not use to the 9am -6pm+ uni days. My attention span is really not cut out for it. There’s been a lot of talk about falling asleep during class, how the hell do you fall asleep in class? The answer is clear to me now. Late nights and long drawn out moments during the day where nothing happens. I’m sure the full week of uni here could be condensed down to 18 hours a week. People often fall asleep in class, I keep myself amused (and awake) by staring at them as they do the nod- first the eyes go and the head starts to fall and then bang the head hits the chest and they are bolt upright again. I’m trying to work out the power of my mind, if I can will them to look at me- perhaps I can draw them out of dreamy lala land. I have come to the conclusion that the power of my mind is particularly weak, but I’ll continue to be amused by it. Or perhaps I’m just trying to justify this new found habit of staring. Nope it’s clear to me now, I’m becoming more Indian (wink!), I’ve never in my life been so stared at since coming to India. Like I always say- “When in India, do as the Indian’s do!”

So spending sick days in my room gave me a taste for being on my own. During week three I hung out with my new best friend- solitude. I rarely left the room, preferring to do my drawing exercises alone with music blasting stupidly loud, it was my attempt to drown out thoughts of loneliness. Ha “self induced” I hear you say, “Nay!” I reply… My new found wallflower status was REALLY beginning to get me down. I remember watching ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ and hating it, there was so much fuss over the character Miranda, Miranda this, Miranda that, Miranda, Miranda, Miranda. This whole ‘thing’ about ‘Miranda’ I found insanely grating- see I’m still ranting about it and I watched the film 12 years ago. Now in India it is all about Kath, Kath this, Kath that, Kath, Kath, Kath. Hmmm perhaps you think I sound petty, no it is really strange- I am going to term it the Kath phenomena. We made friends, but they only talk to Kath, I try to make conversation but this is cut short. Occasionally they make a shallow attempt at being polite- I might get asked a question and then I am cut off. People would come up and introduce themselves to Kath and I’d stand by her side thinking perhaps I’d become invisible since coming to India. I tried to battle the wallflower thing, but by the end of the second week I just went with it. You could call me silent Fee, I felt suffocated because I wasn’t given any space to express myself and so boredom began to set in. Homesickness had caught up with me, I was terribly lonely and it was as though my world revolved around Kath (I love Kath, she’s great) but you need more in your world. I’d leave my room to be greeted with people asking “Where’s Kath?”,“What’s Kath doing?”, “Why isn’t Kath with you?”. I’d even swapped numbers with some of our friends and they’ve only called to ask after Kath. In my head I would be screaming “Fuck Off, I’m not Kath’s fucking secretary!!!!!!”, out loud I’d be polite and do my best not to groan. I really have better things to talk about than Kath. Meltdown time… I spent a small fortune calling friends back home, after a whole afternoon in tears and I confined myself to my room. I had to distance myself from Kath and make my own friends.

Just as an afternote it is now week five, Kath has her friends, I have mine, we are still team K&F or F&K. In part the novelty of ‘Kath’ has worn off, In part I have chilled out- jumped off the wall and rediscovered my voice. We are once again happy little campers.

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Arriving in a strange new land!

July 11, 2007 at 6:29 pm (Arriving in India)

It’s illegal to kill peacocks and cows in India…

So India… Where do I start, it’s been whirlwind. Melbourne is a life time away.

Excitement so far, Adam said I should drink water from the clouds while I was travelling through the sky……. Hmmmmmm beautiful fluffy water. On the leg between Melbourne and Sydney we were given bottled water with a picture of a cloud on it, perhaps it came straight form the clouds, sucked into the plane and bottled for our enjoyment:-

Happy passengers = Happy crew = Happy flight

NID is a bubble land- a safe haven walled in, lush, green, a controlled environment sealed off from the outside world. Students and acidemics wandering around occupying themselves with thoughts of design forgetting the rest of the world;- live, breath, sleep, make, talk design. Connected to all the outside walls are slums.

Nanna’s on Campus…
School runs from 9am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and then it is very typical for the students to stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning working n their assignments. We haven’t gotten into this sleepless culture, early to bed for this pair of western nanna’s. The staying up late is almost a competition who is the most hardcore- sleep depravation is cool for the kids in the hood.

Drinking Chai has replaced my coffee addiction!! Kath sits with some of our new friends at BMW cafe (behind metal workshop).

I have been watching the students perform ‘ragging’. Which has been technically banned by the high court of India and thus now is termed ‘Social Interaction’. It’s ritual which the first years/freshers are subjected too. The action took place on the basketball courts from 9pm till about midnight. I was videoing the going ons, but was in trouble by the guards- technically it’s not taking place, so therefore there should be no record of it. It seemed to me to be a whole lot of yelling… Seniors yelling at the juniors. Sit down, no laughing, are you laughing, do you think it’s funny, heads down…. and so on- but they were screaming at the kids, so much so that it was hard to make out what they were saying; loud , intense, confusing. For three nights we went to see what was going on, it appeared to be some crazy form of bullying- really mean. It was suggested we should get involved- NO WAY! We were joking and thought we’d create a major stir by striping off and running around the court through the crowd. It would be one ragging not forgotten. What we missed last night was a staged fight that went wrong and about twenty people got involved, in the confusion a third year student trod on a nail, so there was blood everywhere. The ringleader of the ‘Social Interaction’ was ejected from the hostel in the middle of the night. We tried to leave the hostel to go for a walk, at first the guards weren’t going to let us, and then we had to sign out and in.There was talk of protests. Tonight it was the same again, though at the end all the freshers were drenched in water, then welcomed, hugged, given ice cream and then the dancing begun (up until this point in time they were being snubbed by the seniors). Every one seemed to know a dance which they all started to perform- they all went kind of crazy. It was very surreal watching them. To me it’s just justified bullying. These are adults; undergraduates and post grads; to me it seems the type of behaviour which could happen in school, it’s stupid. A friend of mine (who is 25) went to get water at 4am and bumped into some second year boys (they’d be 18) who were drunk. They made him dance and sing a song for them. He is 7 years their senior, but because he is a first year post grad student he has to respect their stupid demands, it’s so demeaning. It’s all a bit beyond me. The students here think I am strange because I am so horrified/ disgusted by this stupid tradition.

Hanging with the kids in the hood!

July 11, 2007 at 5:50 pm (Slum Children)

Braiding with the slum children…

Our first week of uni we did a braiding workshop. On Saturday we went with the teacher Errol (named after Errol Flyn) to teach braiding to the slum children. This took place at his rich friends house, or perhaps I should say mansion, a lush spacious oasis. These people live just on the river, but between them and the river are the slums, hundreds, maybe thousands of people live there. The council has reclaimed the land and aims to turn it into parks and recreational areas, thus the slum people need to be relocated. They were allocated land, but it got sold, somebody made a profit and now they are going to be displaced people. Simple classes are being held at the house to teach the children skills so perhaps they can make some money for themselves, that’s what the braiding is all about. A traditional Indian craft form- split ply braiding.

It was a really strange experience, sitting there with these rich educated adults who were also learning to braid with the street kids. After the informal class the children took us down into the slums. I felt like the pied piper; we started with five children and over the course of the journey attracted a group of close to thirty. Extremely friendly; falling over themselves to introduce themselves, holding our hands, touching us, wanting their photo taken- so serious in front of the camera. Arriving back at the main gates the children tried to follow us in, a couple of the leaders shoved them back outside in an almost brutal manner at the same time as pulling us through the gate, there was a certain desperation it the children wanting to stay with us, to hold onto the moment.

Then back to the adults; sipping exotic tea from fine china and making polite chit chat.We are going back next week, I think it is going to be a regular thing. India just seems to be this crazy juxtaposition. I can’t get my head around it. The poverty is heart breaking, but the kids are so friendly, I felt like an intruder, but the occupants of the slums were extremely polite; very different from our adventure out into the city of Ahmedabad, we were harassed by men and the beggars were hitting us and grabbing at us. In the slum if someone went to harass us they were immediately chastised by the group.

What was that about cutting your finger nails on a Sunday?

July 11, 2007 at 5:16 pm (Finger Nails)

A friend of mine has a favorite wives tale about cutting your nails, when you should and shouldn’t cut them. Apparently if you chop them on a Sunday you will be followed by the devil all week. Sunday came round, maybe I was willing something bad to happen or maybe I simply needed to cut my nails- which seemed to be growing extremely fast in the heat.

Aren’t they lovely, trim, neat nails!! (wink!). There are many men it India who have long thumb and pinky finger nails and I have to confess I find it really creepy looking, it makes my skin crawl. I know it is a status symbol, but I just can’t handle it. I’m a bit fixated by it. Hmmm it’s becoming apparent that I harbour these weird preduices.

An introduction into hashish… Sunday the pace had slowed to almost a stop, I started experiencing cabin fever. The weather hot heavy and humid.Bored, bored, bored I feel selfish; or maybe self-indulgent is a better term; this boredom when I am in such an exotic new amazing country. It’s been eight solid days of hanging out with the same person, it think I need my own head space. I am so precious, I’m used to my own space and lots of different friends to hang out with… It’s all been a bit serious so far, where is the silliness laughter, loud tears, I want to feel it in my belly. I expect everything too soon, or maybe I need to make it happen. Step one- make my own independent friends. Kath and I, me and Kath; we have the same bags, thongs, phones, and backpacks; it’s a morphing into the one person. I feel like a shadow. Yes my own insincerities are surfacing; Kath is beautiful, people swarm to her, I feel like wall paper. Fiona the wall flower in the background. I’m trying to work out if I am green eyed and jealous- no I think it is envy (shrug), I am only human after all.

Back to the illegal activities of the day. So, bored and sleeping (I took a nap after chopping my nails), trying to make the day pass faster and then the door bell rang. Yay, our first visitor. Prathima our corruptive friend who likes to talk boys, sex, alcohol and drugs. She had come to alleviate our boredom as well as her own. So it was off into the city in search of papers, the mission failed, but we ate Mexican and sipped on cinnamon chai… Mmmmmmm. Back to the dorms and it was an ask around amongst those who looked as though they may smoke. Pink strawberry flavoured papers were located and Oolala our first Indian hashish joint was smoked. We showed our photos of home and friends, listened to music and chilled the afternoon away. Happy Sundays!!

The devil won’t stop at one illegal activity. Diggi Picked us up and took us out to dinner. Being a bit extravagant and trying to show off I suspect, we were taken to a non-veg restaurant. Then it was back to his house. Gujarat is a dry state. That’s not to say drinking alcohol doesn’t happen, it’s just that if you get caught you will be put in jail. Blackmarket prices are expensive and it is usually really bad quality. Depending on who you get it through it can be way overproof and leathal. Diggi gets his from Mumbai from bottle shops and sneaks it back into the state because he doesn’t trust the blackmarket. So we drank warm whisky passing the bottle between us, when it was gone it was onto vodka. Hmmm I’m not a fan of warm straight spirits, but the evening was really funny.

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India That Magical Place

Autos are fantastic

Me, NID and getting in with the Kids in the Hood!

Living on Curds and rice

Arriving in a strange new land!

Hanging with the kids in the hood!

What was that about cutting your finger nails on a Sunday?

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