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!
